What should we do with Stonehenge?

Having been away, I have only just caught up with the decision to leave Stonehenge to the mercy of the motor car: no tunnel (too expensive) and no by-pass either.

I have visited the place three times I think. The first time was with my parents in the mid-1960s. Then, as I remember, you parked your car just off the road, paid your money at a wooden booth and walked right over to the stones. You could touch them, sit on them. We had a picnic I seem to remember. The thrill came from the sheer proximity, from getting right up close to something built all those millennia ago.

By the time I went again, it was with my own children, some time in the mid-1990s I guess. By then, there was a ghastly visitor centre and you certainly couldn’t get close to the thing itself – but I don’t remember much more. (You don’t when you go with kids – you’re too busy tending to their every need and being upbeat about whatever dreary pile of antiquity you’re inflicting on them, to get much out of it yourself.)

The third time, five or six years ago, was a more reflective visit, with plenty of time to think about just how terrible the fate of the stones had been. In fact, there is not a single wonder of the world I know of  that is more unpleasant and tacky to visit.

Radical solutions are, I am afraid, called for.

I went on that last trip with a learned little group: me, my publishers from Profile, and the excellent Rosemary “Pugin” Hill (she was then in the planning stages of a book on Stonehenge, that is coming out in my Wonders series next year).

We did it properly – by which I mean, followed all the recommended routes and dutifully used the audio-guide.

The problem, I remember thinking, is that Stonehenge is all about immediate impact, spectacle and proximity to the past. It’s a touchy-feely sort of monument. It’s no good keeping visitors 50 yards away and making them walk round it in serious touristic fashion. Because there is nothing to look AT apart from what first catches your eye. There is no detail at all that repays close examination, and there is no greater understanding to be had by looking harder at it. Even the audio-guide gave up, and started telling ghost stories in a fake west country accent.

So what should we do with it? Well, if it really is the case that we can’t just let people back on to wander at will (and I still need some convincing on that one), I’d give up the unequal struggle to construct a “proper” tourist experience. On my last visit, I decided that I would just build a vast Norman Foster restaurant, so designed that every table had a perfect view. After all, if you can’t get to get up close, better to admire it in the warm and dry over a nice meal and a glass or two, rather than wander round in the drizzle being talked at by the awful audio.

But now that the road avoidance schemes have come to nothing, I’m tempted to a more imaginative solution. Bite the bullet. Underpin the damn thing and put a large roundabout around it. Then everyone could have a great view from their cars (they could always go round twice if they were that interested) – and they wouldn’t be forced to pay the £6.30 per adult currently levied, to have a truly awful time (or £15.80 for the family ticket – to really ruin your children’s day).

Either that, or we should all become druids and demand access free on religious grounds.

Comments

[Stella pilsworth]

I remember visiting Stonehenge as a child, I loved the eerie mystery of the circle's creation and would have loved to share the magic with my own children. Like many others I was appalled that it should be fenced off and no longer touched. In 1985 it was announced that for a short period in, I think, March, we would be allowed to visit it for was it one day?unfenced. I drove up from Hampshire, with my small daughter and newborn in tow, desperate that they should experience this magic - I was clearly postpartum delusional, they would never remember - but I would.
However on arrival, there was a large sign announcing that due to the unprecedented amount of rain the stones were again fenced off and that was it. I am not aware that they have ever been opened up again.

[Christine]

I saw Stonehenge back in the 60s on a cold, windy, grey day with nary another person in sight, just me, Ma and my brother. The wind blew through the stones, and they seemed to resonate. My little brother climbed onto the 'altar' and jumped up and down (oh me, how much stone did he chip off?), and Ma and I sat, comtemplated the silence and we all agreed that Stonehenge was 'awesome'. That is so true. The place made me shiver and feel so very otherworldly. Ma has long passed on, I now live in upstate New York, and little brother has his own demons to deal with. But the stones prevail. I don't know what should be done to protect them and let people see them, because people SHOULD see them, experience the silence that I did. But I'm sure some Government hack will come up with some half-baked solution that will solve nothing and please no-one.... That's the state of today's World. Cynical, U Betcha!

[Jane Holland]

I went to Stonehenge with my eldest daughters when they were in their early-mid teens. Being about thirty, I was going through a hippy phase at the time, living in a camper van and wearing odd socks.

I drove to Stonehenge in the camper one evening and parked up near the stones. A man warned me that the police would move us on if we tried to sleep there, but suggested a narrow track running perpendicular to the A-road, with a good view of the stones. Only problem was, he said, 'the tanks use it.' By which he meant military tanks.

I then spent the night worrying that we were about to be mashed into the ground by a large tank. Luckily, dawn arrived without incident, and I tried to rouse the girls, to no avail. So I witnessed first light breaking across those ancient stones on my own: a spectacular sight, all the same.

We couldn't afford the entry fee, so got back on our travels without visiting the site properly. The thought of these officious idiots trying to stop people even seeing them from a distance makes my blood boil!

[anthony alcock]

Nothing to do with Stonehenge, but a much earlier blog on David Beckham. There is a participial phrase in the Septuagint version of Isaiah 28,9 that almost, but not quite, describes Beckham: "those who have been degalactisized" (hoi apogegalaktismenoi). Of course, it doesn't work, because he moved from one galaxy (Real Madrid) to another (LA). How trying the world of intellectual flippancy can be at times.

[Chris Thorp]

As a Briton living in Canada since 1955 I still remember Stonehenge for the fascinating part it plays in the science of leys and the old straight tracks so excellently treated in John Michell's "The New View Over Atlantis". Surely some excellent use could be made of this topic to keep Stonehenge alive and interesting for the current generations with all the mechanical gadgetry of our age of machines.
Chris thorp

[anthony alcock]

I've never been to Stonehenge, but it seems to me that one of its problems is that it's not on the way to anywhere. Those wishing to see the Statue of Liberty get the Staten Island ferry and then come back straight away. Those wishing to see the Memnon (Amenophis III) statues that stood in front of the now vanished mortuary temple on the West Bank of Luxor simply have to look out of the window of the bus as they are going on the King's Valley and so on.

[jj]

Stonehenge has been stolen from the people and locked away. Thank heavens the scheme to stop us even looking at it from the A303 has been dropped.

The zoo animals argument applies to historic monuments too. If you don't let people get close to them and enjoy them, why on earth should the people care about preserving them? A bit of wear and tear on Stonehenge would be a small price to pay if more of its visitors feel the magic and buy into the idea that we should spend time, effort and taxpayers money to preserve history.

[Tony Francis]

Concerning the Hill of Tara: there are apparently two in Ireland. The Hill of Kings appears to be:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_of_Tara
Looking at the photos, it would seem there is plenty of open ground to put a highway, without disturbing the hill:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N3_road
I guess I don't see why they are thinking of disturbing the site. Maybe I am missing something of the local politics?
Of interest, Plantation Tara in "Gone With the Wind" was named after Hill of Tara:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_wind
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_%28film%29

[Steve Kimberley]

I was very lucky in the early 70s to have the opportunity, via an acquaintance, to meet the Chief Druid at Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice and to accompany the Druids into the circle at dawn. I don't recall any lightning bolt or cosmic voice marking the event but I still have a sense of something deep and strong and simple - like a piece of good bread, rather than one of the cheap, garish, sickly-sweet confections that pass for food (or, indeed, culture) these days.

On the subject of motors versus monuments, have you heard what the National Roads Authority in Ireland are doing at the Hill of Tara?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2175188,00.html

Now, where did I leave my bicycle...?

[dr venables preller]

Increasing availability of leisure time might enable every individual in the land to visit Stonehenge (say) twice every sixty years. Adding in foreign tourists and additional frequent and regular visits by locals could add another one million a year.

If the visits were to follow a typical Pareto distribution, with 80% taking place in the busiest ten weeks of the year, even if visits were evenly spaced in a ten-hour day (unlikely) and each person stayed for one hour (less likely) at any one time there could be 3,000 people on the site, with far more at peak times.

In this situation a satisfactory solution would need to balance individual pleasure from a visit (or distant sighting) with annoyances and risks including degradation of the experience from large crowds.

From this perspective, a solution could be actually to discourage visits whilst appearing to make provision for them.

That should seem familiar.

[Herbert Thornton]

It makes me think of the fate of the giant Buddhas at Bamiyan in Afghanistan that the Taliban blew up.

Is that the future of Stonehenge too?

[Hein Maassen, Leidschendam,. The Netherlands]

I suggest to make 100 copies of Stonehenge, spread them over the world as 'Stonehenge theme parks' and then blow up the original which has the temerity to block modern traffic. A beautiful 24-lane motorway could then be built, the remnants of which will perhaps be as much admired in a couple of thousand years from now as Stonehenge is at present.

[dr venables preller]

Like Irene H, I visited Stonehenge at a time when few did so. In the 1960s eight of us en route to Cornwall for a coming-of-age celebration stopped for a midnight picnic, with strictly no damage or litter.

What to do in more crowded times? One possibility might be to fit small groups with wireless video cameras, who could then tour by proxy for the guidebook crowds who could view giant screens in a hidden visitor centre as they refreshed with fries and paper cup beverages.

A more upmarket experience, priced accordingly, might be offered in a comfortable restaurant serving cooling glasses and downloadable video podcasts.

Those looking for up close hands on could queue for the few videocam places available.

The Stones are already on a large island site, so the giant roundabout option would only require some one-way signs, and toll collection. If this option were tried first, the tolls could finance the building of the hidden visitor centre

[Irene H.]

I'm glad I visited Stonehenge in the late 1950s! Nary a soul but us there.

(Like my first visit to that great natural monument, the Grand Canyon, when you still could drive along it and stop where you wanted, and without being crowded. My last time there, in the mid-1990s, we opted for a spur of the moment helicopter ride.)

And lucky the monument that does not draw crowds . . .

It's a world-wide problem, and the answers are not what one want to be. And are there any satisfying answers at all?

[Tony Francis]

I thought Chevy Chase knocked Stonehenge down by backing into it in the movie "European Vacation".
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Vacation
The wiki site has a nice article on Stonehenge, although it doesn't measure up to their standards:
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
According to the History Channel, the stones were lugged from several hundred miles away. It seems there is less at Stonehenge than would meet the eye. Apparently some very old wood has been found, but little else to indicate how the place was built, by whom and to what purpose. File Stonehenge along with the Pyramids under: how the heck did these people do this?

[caterpillar]

I find it dispiriting that we go to such extreme lengths to discourage visitors to our monuments. Although I have never quite understood the innate desire people have to touch whatever it is they are visiting - less still their desire to add inane graffiti (there must be a treatise somewhere on the intellectual decline of the graffito) - it is equally strange that many of our monuments are left unprotected, open to abuse from paint, urine, litter and knife. Stonehenge is spectacular, but unless vistors can truly engage with it, what real purpose does it serve other than an abstract icon? To me it smacks of the bottom line - surely it wouldn't be beyond the wit to employ some guardians to oversee the vistors (the site is, let's face it, small, and vistor numbers could be contained). The Greeks are way ahead in this regard with their whistle-blowing guardians of high-profile ruins - even some of their museum attendants can be remarkably draconian. We must be able to find the cash (even by marginally elevated ticket prices for full access) to add an attendant or two and a whistle?

[Candadai Tirumalai]

Thomas Hardy's Tess is sleeping on the sacrificial altar stone at Stonehenge when she is arrested for "murder". Hardy calls her a pure woman.
The arrangement of the stones recalls the Greek Pi, with its unending fractional values, but is no doubt fortuitous.

[PhilosopherP]

If you'd like really tacky, google "Carhenge". We were there a couple of summers ago -- and while it is tacky, it is also an amazing art piece about consumerism.

[Lidwina]

I never saw Stonehenge in natura, only by using the visitor's centre. It is still awesome. The best way to see it is just looking out of the car window when on the way to somewhere else, on a rainy day. I am told this is the best way to see the Taj Mahal too, just a glimpse out of the train window, early morning in the mist.

[Xjy]

Everything's being shut down, locked away and charged for. So they should put an electrified wall around it, post heavily armed goons there and start shooting people. Plus patent the damn thing and start levying licence fees for every mention of it. National heritage my arse.

[nick]

Like Mary I first visited stonehenge as a child in the '60s and returned as a parent in the '90s.
The second visit was a huge disappointment, stonehenge only "works" when viewed from the centre looking out towards the horizon. Forcing tourists to view it only from the outside completely eviscerates the experience reducing it to little more than a 5 minute stroll around the perimeter.

Whether access to the site can be restored is a difficult problem, needing to balance the potential of damage or vandalism with the desire to present the monument in its best and most impressive aspect. Other sites seem to achieve this, perhaps the system operated on HMS Victory (only a handful of miles away) would be more appropriate.