Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.Username: jd755Date: 2019-12-12 15:19:49Reaction Score: 3
In the 50'-60's rebovation reconstruction event stones were taken 'off site' for 'repairs and replacements' which included rock drilling, installing hidden steel bolts, recarving brand new sockets for a lintel or two due to a'twisting' of the pair of uprights. They twisted away from each other and the fallen lintels sockets were 'too shallow' (bloody jerry builders back when this thing was assembled!) and one of the uprights was damaged to the point it couldn't support the weight of the lintel.
No mention of how it could support the same lintel with a socket ina different place.
Some of the stones are three or four feet into the ground one is eight feet in. Most of the stones are of unknown depth.
Why weren't the twin uprights simply 'loosened in their sockets and repacked in their 'original positions?
Cannot recall which particular stone ground socket was excavated in the 20's but they 'found' two coins, one 'roman' one 'georgian' and as they lifted the stone out they found a pair of 'antler picks' right in the bottom underr a multi tonne stone. Strong stuff these antlers.
These were subsequebtly radiocarbon dated between 3340-2910 cal BC..
Amazing truly amazing.
The leap of imagination is then made that these incredibly hard antlers (sat between chalk and bluestone are evidence of the build date. Coblers is the only response to that, to me always to me.
I cannot imagine the effort involved in hacking out an eight foot deep or a four foot deep slot even in chalk with an antler pick. Only room for one or at most two men swinging picks in these slots.
I've had lots of stonehenge sites open and closed and clearly I have closed the one that has all of the above information so no link. Will add it in when it resurfaces.
It came out of a search for the Antrobus connection and the spooky 'lawyer' (why is it always a bloody lawyer involved in 'recent history' and always a bloody catholic in 'ancient history'?) Chubb who shelled out £6500 at auction in 1918 (said to be the equivalent of a million pounds in today's currency) because he though "a local man should own it" only to hand it over within a couple of years to "the nation". Makes no sense,
Here's a site well worth a read.
Silent Earth: Restorations at Stonehenge
And another
Parishes: Amesbury | British History Online
And a third.
A new Medieval view of Stonehenge
This thing was of zero yes zero importance to the 'private' owners who were buying and selling the lan around it over the centuries, at least as far as my digging into them is concerned.
Finally for now a 'great storm on new years eve 1797 (if memory serves) blew a lintel down that broke in two when it fell in another smaller stone sending bits over eight feet away. Bloody strong wind or maybe an upright was a 'bit wobbly' in its socket. Another storm in 1900 blew down another upright standing stone.
Other elements which have taken down stones are water which 'washed out the fill' and ice which did its magic to the water and split the fill to loosen the stone, apparently. It's a wonder to me how any of them managed to stay upright under such an onslaught.
And another thing if antlers were tough enough to carve out chalk what the hell was tough enough to create flat surfaces, sockets, tenons and tongues on blue and sarsen stones?
