Foamhenge, the U.K. version

foamhenge

Foamed polystyrene, often known by one of its brand names, Styrofoam, makes an attractive material for Stonehenge replicas. It is light and can be formed into any shape. Lintels no doubt help to keep the light uprights in place.

We know of two Foamhenges. One is in Virginia in the States (to be covered later), and one was a temporary construction, built on the Wiltshire Downs by Channel 5 TV in the U.K., and then sold on Ebay. This was a full-sized careful reconstruction of the monument at its height, rather better-looking than many because the real shapes and irregularities of the stones were taken into account. Is the odd pink cast meant to be the colour of the megaliths when they were first cut?  We welcome any information that would shed light on the mystery of the flesh-coloured stones!

foamhenge

Many thanks to brilliant photographer Pete Glastonbury for permission to use his pictures. Permission to use them elsewhere must be given by him. Our original score for this henge replica was a solid (well, as solid as they can be, made of carpet tubes and polystyrene) 8 druids, but recent conversation has caused us to reconsider and this entry’s score has been increased to 9, with a future possibility. Very nice!

Just found this: a Youtube video [link] showing the research done at this Foamhenge. Brilliant! Stonehenge has always represented midwinter to us, and this bears that intuition out.

Virtual Henges, Part One

reconstructed

Okay, so right off we admit, these henge replicas don’t exist out in the real world. They are figments of the base 2 realm. Even so, they merit a look as more evidence of the Stonehenge-building imperative. There are a number of them out there, and at first we were inclined to post them all as one. But there is enough  on the site posted by reader sarsen56 for us to make a whole post just from that.

sarsen56

At the top is a reconstruction of how Stonehenge’s stones may once have stood. The lower image is a reproduction of the stones as they are today. The page the second picture comes from has many more images of interest to Stonehenge fans and we recommend a look. We hesitated at first to post what is after all just a few runs of zeros and ones, but in a way, wasn’t the original Stonehenge a sort of grid, a way of reducing the landscape or at least the horizon to a series of zeros and ones in order to bring order to the information it contained?

How to score this? Difficult to say. We like the second image very much, and the first one also has its charms. Still, they don’t exist, do they? No biscuits or cheese puffs to eat at the end of the day, no tourist revenue, no waiting for sunrise or misty weather in order to catch the perfect photo. Score: 6½ virtual druids.