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Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
About now the jackdaws should be busily raising their families in nests built in crevices in Stonehenge. One favoured spot is a “chimney” within Stone 60 which they have to patiently drop sticks though until one becomes wedged and they can start building their nest. How long jackdaws have been living at Stonehenge is anyone’s guess but it’s quite possible they have been there far longer than there have been ravens at the Tower of London. It certainly suits them very well. As 18th century English poet William Cowper wrote of the jackdaw….
A great frequenter of the church,
Where, bishoplike, he finds a perch,
And dormitory too
At around the same time the early ecologist, Gilbert White, noted that ….
“Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity: which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd-boys, who are always idling round that place”.
NRS
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
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Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
George Brown was only four when his home was burgled a few days before Christmas, but along with Avebury Great Farm he would inherit his father’s doggedness. In sight of Cherhill White Horse in 1850 George famously beat off an attempt to part him from his gig, then tracked the culprits down to discover one of them had been armed with a loaded pistol. Of this uncompromising character Dean John Merewether would the previous year write:
It is some comfort to know that the present owner of the circle and the western avenue, Mr George Brown, will not allow a single stone to be defaced or removed; and has been the means in time past also, of preserving them. George Brown of Avebury has engaged that he will take care, and his sons after him, that not a stone at Avebury shall again be injured or removed, I feel confident that a general spirit of antiquarian conservatism has been widely and effectually instilled, from which the cause of archaeology and our Institute will reap much advantage.
George Brown died at Avebury in July 1881 aged 87, the following year Sir John Lubbock introduced the Ancient Monuments Protection Act.
B.E.
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
Sir John Lubbock is remembered in passing today as a nineteenth century archaeologist and politician who championed the 1882 Ancient Monuments Act and saved Avebury from development.
“Darwin’s Apprentice” is a unique book that looks beyond these headlines to reveal an important yet forgotten Darwinist through the eyes of his prehistoric archaeological and ethnographic collection. Both man and collection are witnesses to an extraordinary moment in the history of science and archaeology – the emotive scientific, religious and philosophical debate on human antiquity triggered by the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” in 1859.
It will be published by Pen & Sword Archaeology in April 2013 to mark the centenary anniversary of John Lubbock’s death. Further details can be found here
Janet Owen
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
“Had no one announced his presence, those who are acquainted with the portraits of his uncle, the Great Napoleon, would at once have recognised him.” Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte had raised local eyebrows when visiting Wiltshire in October 1860, even though predictably “a more peaceful visit than his uncle’s might have been had he succeeded in crossing the channel”. The Prince had brought with him a letter of introduction to Edward Kite, a grocer and historian, employed as Assistant Secretary and Curator by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. Kite would act as the Prince’s guide to Devizes as well as Silbury Hill and Avebury, “at which place his royal highness spent some time” having previously visited Stonehenge.
The Prince, who had been born in England due to his family being intercepted at sea when making their way to America, was a renowned philologist and his approach to Kite concerned a translation of the Song of Solomon in the Wiltshire dialect. The translation would appear in print the following year.
Edward Kite, The Song of Solomon in the Wiltshire Dialect, as it is Spoken in the Northern Division. From the Authorised English Version, by Edward Kite, for Louis Lucien Bonaparte (Strangeways & Walden, 1861).
B.E.
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
From the collection of the Wiltshire Museum: William Tatton Winter (1855-1928), Stonehenge, signed etching, 350 x 270 mm, dating from just two years before the artist’s death.
It would not be obvious from the etching that the year 1926 was the year a pig farm was established on the adjacent former military aerodrome, where the redundant buildings and water tower still dominated the landscape. The recent past had seen other changes too with a traditional route that crossed the bank and ditch having been diverted. Timber props in evidence for years had also disappeared with a number of stones ‘restored’ and set in concrete, and seven years of archaeological excavation lately described as ‘disastrous’ being suspended.Recently erected fences were also torn down that year when Druids clashed with officialdom over access and burial issues that we perhaps think of as more recent history.
These were changing times at ‘timeless’ Stonehenge and to this background William Tatton Winter revives Christian infused imagery that had petered out in the previous century to portray a somewhat distracted shepherd with his flock amidst the symbolic ruin of a pagan temple.
B.E.
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
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Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
Stonehenge by Henry Mark Anthony, 1817-1886
So far as I can recall I managed to live more than fifty years without really hearing of Avebury. Well, apart from a small black-and-white photo I saw of it when I was about eight in the tattered volume of “1001 Wonderful Things” that served as our version of television in those days – and for some reason I assumed the stones were only about a foot tall so I instantly dismissed them from my thoughts. As for Silbury, I definitely hadn’t heard of that.
Wind forward to the first day of the twenty first century and I’m driving west on the A4 from Marlborough with a friend, exploring. We go round a bend and up pops Silbury right in front of us. “What the hell is that?” were my very first words on the subject of British prehistory. If you’re going to start, you might as well start like that. I was amazed – like all who first travel along that route, including the Romans no doubt.
Later we drove on for our very first visit to Stonehenge. We were shocked rigid by the adjacent squalid visitor centre – so much so (and it was maybe a bit childish and out of character for a couple of otherwise respectable fifty somethings) that we went away and returned with two large placards asking people to write to their MP or Congressman about the state of things! We were chucked out of the car park and had to risk all by standing in the busy road but everyone seemed to agree with us.
But now, thirteen years later things are about to change. The road we were told to stand in will soon be gone and much else will change for the better. Restoring Stonehenge to something closer to “splendid isolation” has to be one of the best things ever achieved in the name of heritage. I’m so glad it’s happening in “my” time.
NRS
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
“Silbury Hill on the Wiltshire Downs, the biggest prehistoric earthwork in Europe, no one knows what it was for, when it was made and who lies under it. And what strange rites went on nearby, here at Avebury? No one knows. This was the chief temple of northern Europe three to four thousand years ago, but we do know that the Bronze Age people who worshipped here, long before the Druids were thought of, were a peaceful people, highly organized and who made beautiful pottery. We know too that they shaped these stones and moved them on logs from a distant valley, “
Betjeman’s commentary on ‘Devizes’ from ‘John Betjeman in the West Country’ first broadcast 1962 and available on DVD as ‘Betjeman Revisited’.
Betjeman features tonight in Heritage! The Battle for Britain’s Past episode 3 of 3: ‘Broken Propylaeums’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rd37j BBC Four 21.00
B.E.
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
In October 1871 the vicar of Avebury, Bryan King, demonstrated the value of local engagement by writing to Sir John Lubbock:
“When you were here – I think that you remarked that you would not object to purchase the two meadows in this village containing the stones & part of the Dyke. Since then the farm of which they formed part has been bought by a land & building society and one of the meadows in question – though not the one containing most stones – is now on sale. I have just seen the agent who informs me that they are all ready to sell it … Now this meadow with its proportion of Dyke contains about 6 acres … I do not know whether you would care to buy this or to make an offer for it – but I write to you this information merely in consequence of your having made the remark in question about the meadows.”
The rest as they say is history – watch it on iplayer here
And tonight: Episode 2 of 3: ‘The Men from the Ministry‘ BBC Four 21.00
B.E.
________________________________________________
This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
In July 1882, the year in which Sir John Lubbock introduced the Ancient Monuments Protection Act, his friend, the highly influential John Ruskin, was to be found staying with Nevil Story Maskelyne and his wife Thereza at Basset Down House. Enjoying a picnic on the downs, Ruskin had visited Avebury:
“the day was delicious and there was a Druid circle and a British fort, and tumuli as many as you liked like molehills, and a Roman Road and a Dyke of the Belgae all mixed up together in a sort of Antiquary’s giblet pie it was like dreaming of the things, they were so jumbled up.”
B.E.
________________________________________________
This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
Postcards to friends of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site
Just walking distance west of Avebury is the neighbouring settlement of Yatesbury, a tiny village now home to less than 150 people. In the late 1940s Yatesbury was an RAF camp housing more than 5,000 men – one of them was Joe Meek, who spent his National Service working in radar. (Yatesbury Radar School is pictured above). Meek’s training in electronics led him into the music business; in 1962 he wrote and produced Telstar, the worlds first electronic pop hit, selling 5 million copies around the world.
Stationed in Yatesbury around the same time was Brian Hodgson, a radio trainee who went on to work in, and eventually run, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Hodgson made the sound of the Tardis by scraping his mothers front door key along the strings of a piano; he later formed The White Noise with Delia Derbyshire and David Vorhaus, producing the 1968 cult album An Electric Storm. Daphne Oram, co-founder the Radiophonic Workshop, was from Devizes, not far from Yatesbury. She invented the extraordinary Oramics Machine, a partly-mechanical synthesiser that produced sounds from shapes drawn on film. The prototype was built by Graham Wrench, utilising techniques learned during his National Service in Wiltshire as an RAF radar technician .
The Oramics Machine can currently be seen in the London Science Museums exhibition Oramics to Electronica which also highlights the pioneering work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Steve Marshall
www.stevemarshall.org.uk
(Many thanks to Gordon Chivers for assistance with the production of this postcard.)
See also the Science Museum exhibition co-curated by Steve and his 2 articles online about the history of the Radiophonic Workshop and Graham Wrench’s role in developing Oramics
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This is part of a series of short “postcards” that anyone with something to share is welcome to submit, whether that is a digital snap and a “wish you were here” or something more involved. Please do join in by sending your postcards to theheritagejournal@gmail.com
For others in the series put postcards in the search box.
