[Closed] Stonehenge

same for the rings at Avebury. Rebuilt to a plan designed by an Scottish businessman

😯

Great photos - thanks Cougar!

Same sort of thing with the Roman ruins in Rome - over the years things fell down and people stood them up again. They're still fascinating.

Nah, you're rong..

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Yup it's fake.

Julian Cope never mentioned this!

The original stones are kept nearby at RAF Boscombe Down in storage. The ones you see at the Heritage Centre are in fact reproductions made around WW2. I don't think they're concrete, however, but they did import mined stones from Wales for authenticity.

It was necessary to do this when Salisbury Plain was under intense military activity; indeed the site of the stones was part of an RAF airfield during the war.

Sadly its poorer cousin, Woodhenge, received a catastrophically poor makeover.... 🙁

same for the rings at Avebury. Rebuilt to a plan designed by an Scottish businessman

Not entirely true, Keiller* dug up a number of stones that had been knocked over and buried and set them upright, but he had no idea if the orientation of each stone matched how it had originally stood, and quite a few had been broken up and used for building material in a number of local houses; unfortunately it makes for very poor buildings, as William Stukely remarked back in the 18th Century when he surveyed the circle and surrounding monuments.
Stukely made very accurate engravings of the circle, and AFAIK Keiller isn't that far out, but he never finished the job, in the NE quadrant of the circle it appears to be empty of stones, but most are still there, buried under the grass and the powers-that-be are leaving them there, to avoid damaging any archaeological remains, which is slightly ironic, because most archaeological remains pertaining to the original circle will be under the stones, everything else can only be more recent than 3-400 years, since the stones were pulled down because of their pagan origins.
It's daft, really, "we don't know what archaeology is there, but we won't investigate in case we might disturb archaeological remains we don't know are there unless we look".
Ten years ago two stones were investigated because there were concerns they might fall over, one of them had been very close to the end wall of a garage that Keiller had pulled down, along with other buildings and the occupants moved to new houses he had built at Avebury Truslo.
When they dug down to the base of the stone it had moved, because the socket it was set into had been compromised by the garage foundation, so it was very carefully pulled back upright and its foundation carefully filled with highly compressed chalk, to avoid any voids forming over time, similar to what was done at Silbury Hill.
The other stone, second heaviest still standing, was found to have never moved in 5000-odd years, also there was far more set in the ground than had been anticipated - they got down two metres and hadn't found the base of the stone, so gave up.
That particular stone weighs around 90 tons...
Certainly reconstruction work has been carried out at Avebury but far less than at Stonehenge, mainly because the stones are just single ones set upright, without any hand working being carried out, unlike Stonehenge which is made up of heavily worked stones with lintels, etc., quite a lot of difference between the two, basically.
Keiller had planned on removing all of the houses in the circle, and raising all of the remaining stones that were buried, but war got in the way, and his plans never came to fruition, so now you have the only stone circle with a village sat right in the middle.
Which also means the stones are still perfectly accessible, unlike Stonehenge where they're all fenced off, making it even more artificial, in many ways.

The original stones are kept nearby at RAF Boscombe Down in storage. The ones you see at the Heritage Centre are in fact reproductions made around WW2. I don't think they're concrete, however, but they did import mined stones from Wales for authenticity.

Ah, you will have your little joke, I guess you believe it's not even in its original position either...
The Welsh stones are the Bluestones and are a completely different material to the stones making up the main circle, those stones are Sarsen, the same as the Avebury stones, and came from the same source, the valley at Fyfield Down, twenty miles away, and roughly two miles from Avebury. Sarsen is a very hard form of sandstone, is very distinctive and any geologist who has a clue would instantly know if any of the Sarsens had been replaced with an alternative, lichen growth on the stones, like that at Avebury, would also give the game away, each different species grows outward in a ring, and the growth is very, very slow, so a real tell-tale if any jiggery-pokery had taken place.
Or are you a believer in a conspiracy that has everyone, archaeologist and geologist as well as those responsible for looking after the stones, keeping schtum about a big cover-up?
Per-lease!
It is true, though, that the military were genuinely talking about knocking the whole thing down because it was in the way of an airfield, which is partly why the new visitors centre is at Airman's Corner.
And no, I am not an archaeologist; I just live fairly close to Avebury.
*Alexander Keiller of the marmalade making family.

Same with Hadrian's Wall, lots of it rebuilt in the Victorian era. Never the same after I found that out.

Antonine wall is vastly superior in my opinion, all original. Even the lighting.

Same with Hadrian's Wall, lots of it rebuilt in the Victorian era. Never the same after I found that out.

Many other times too but it's never been very secretive.

Oh I'll add it was preserved on Vicorian time with the turf top and exacavaed it, was latter times that they did reconstruction. Victorian era was a local businessman buying land around it to protect it.

Wish they'd put it back out of sight of the A303 😡

Thought we were talking about the best rock mocumentry ever

Sorry crap linky on my tablet.

Wish they'd put it back out of sight of the A303

I wish they'd hurry up and bury the 303 in a tunnel.
And train the dicks who drive the 303 just what the words KEEP CLEAR mean on the bloody roundabout on the way down to Salisbury.

Oh no. D'you think it's affected the strength of it's magic astral energy?