Monthly Archives for February 2009

Avebury and Silbury and the Long Barrow, too

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photo from Pete Glastonbury, with permission

Sent in by faithful reader and premier Wiltshire photographer, Pete Glastonbury, this model of the Avebury, Silbury landscape  was made by a local as part of his train set.

We get the question from time to time, “Why replicas of Stonehenge and not Avebury, which is bigger?” Well, this is part of what started us off with this project in the first place. Why is Stonehenge such an obsession with people (at least those who don’t speak Latin-based languages)? Why not replicas of Callanish, the Rollright Stones, Castlerigg, Duloe, Drombeg, Stenness, or any of the many others in the British Isles and around the world? It must be those lintels and trilithons!

At any rate, here is that rare item, the Avebury replica,  Silbury Hill included, their  chalk still white as it must have been before turf grew over them. The little chunk of summat on the lower right is West Kennet Long Barrow. A brilliant bit of work, we think.

Speaking of train sets, a train set at a show in Kemptville, Ontario included a precariously perched bit of Stonehenge, not worthy of a post to itself, but worth mentioning and  [link]ing to. How many Stonehenges are out there gathering dust as small trains roar by?

Baconhenge, Site of your Seasonal Celebration

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photo by Carol Squires for the Anticraft

This one’s a little messier than usual (especially if you add syrup), but it has made a play for the big time as few foodhenges have, even getting some attention on National Public Radio in the States, an interview (with the builder, not the henge) which you can hear at this link.

We are pleased with Carin Huber at the AntiCraft for beginning her Baconhenge page with this sentence: “Technically, a henge is actually an oval or circular earthwork, with a surrounding bank built up of the earth excavated from a ditch inside the bank.” She also uses words like trilithon and lintel, although technically there do not appear to be any trilithons in this model.

Carin says: “Let Baconhenge be the site of your seasonal celebration! Let bacon stand in for the sacrificed Year King, French toast for the Grain Goddess, the eggs in the frittata for the Cosmic Egg, and the vegetables for the bountiful Earth on which we live.” Lining it up with the sunrise is optional.

Score: Well, the recipe says it feeds 6 druids, so let’s go with that. We’re always glad to see interesting variations on the henging art!

Stonehenge of Orem, Utah

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photo by Mario Ruiz, from the Daily Herald, with permission

From the article: “Motorists cruising near Center Street and 400 West in Orem in recent weeks may have made a double take upon glimpsing a newly erected large-scale replica of the iconic prehistoric monument Stonehenge in England.” We’ll bet they did!

This was the first we’d seen of what may be the newest Stonehenge replica in North America. It stands on the lawn of a new high-end nursing facility for recovery from a hospital stay or other health problem, a transitional facility called Stonehenge of Orem. You may wonder why.

The administrator says that the number one question he gets is why they chose Stonehenge as a theme. He must be up on recent Stonehenge information, because he mentions that Stonehenge is believed by some to have been a place of healing, much like their facility. (If you wish to learn what he meant by the unusual statement, “We want to be the Disney World of skilled nursing facilities,“ then you’ll have to click on the link to the article.)

Score: 6½ druids. Not a bad replica–a little like a large-sized Cockington Green, a little like the sandstone henge in Tasmania. And it is our first entrant from the Beehive State!

Help Wanted: Henge Builders

UFO Landing Strip dot com

Just had to post this link in case anyone out there dreams of building a Stonehenge replica in northern California. California needs a full-sized, permanent replica, so we encourage any interested parties! You may be excited to know, they’re anticipating making discoveries as they go, as evidenced by this sentence, “What if Stonehenge contains formulas or points to locations in the sky?”

Why didn’t I think of that?!

Winter Solstice Henge, Washington State Again

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photo by littlemysteries, with permission

What kind of secret waves are broadcast through the air in Washington State? It has become Michigan’s only rival for the slogan, The Stonehenge State. (See the Clonehenge page, The 44 Large, Permanent Replicas) We’ve heard there may be another Stonehenge replica outside Seattle and believe me, we’re looking into it.

This henge was temporary, though, and only a partial one. It was built in a backyard in Clarkston, Washington, littlemysteries tells us, “for a Winter Solstice gathering and ritual,” out of  “wire, papier mâché [re-spelled by us just because we like diacritical marks], old wallpaper, and paint (and possibly other materials, I’m not sure)”

Remarkably, this is the only case we know in which the replica was privately built for a solstice ritual. We’re lucky to have a record of it.

Score: 6 druids, at least one of them awarded for the motivation of the builders. It’s good that Washington supplies the West Coast with henges, because California and Oregon seem to be falling down on the job.

P.S.: littlemysteries, we see those melting peeps in your photostream, and the peepicide, too! Frankly your peep-related behaviour worries us a little. Is one being drowned? And what’s with the tag peepdeath?! (What is it about peeps that spurs violence? See the bottom photo on this PeepHenge page.)

Lego Doctor Who: The Secret of Stonehenge

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from the Lego Doctor Who by thegreattotemaster

How can we resist posting this one? The strange genius who generated this objet d’art lives in Iceland. This salt ceramic dough henge is just the sort of odd thing we like. Here is the video of the 2nd episode. The link for the first is here. (The haziness of the video, by the way, is an indication of pre-dawn in the story. The light improves as the clip continues.)

As we said, we sense there is some kind of strange genius going on here and, if he continues on the path he’s on, we expect great things from the totemaster!

Note the trilithon, bluestones–this builder has taken time to look at Stonehenge. Score: 7 druids, and, yes, they were awarded partly for attitude!

Dominohenge: Not to Be Toppled

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photos and henge by errordactyl and brother, with permission

As we’ve said before, anything vaguely rectangular and three-dimensional eventually becomes the material for a henge, and dominoes are no exception. Here’s a link to another one [link] with added amusing comments.

We like the one above because someone actually looked at Stonehenge (see photo below) and noticed the trilithons grouped in the center and that many of the lintels in the sarsen circle are down. The use of two dominoes for each upright was thoughtful, too.

domino-2We can’t quite make out what the little coloured figures are but we’re going to take them as bluestones. If you want, the glass can be a UFO. Why not?

Score: 6½ druids. We’re glad that errordactyl thinks  Stonehenge is f***ing awesome. But we’re not sure we agree with the commenter on the other dominohenge who implies that Stonehenge would look better if it had dalmation-type spots. Don’t give the vandals any new ideas. And leave the toppling to the pros!

Pavel Pavel’s Stonehenge, Czech Republic

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photo from Strakonice promotional materials

Pavel Pavel, a Czech engineer, built this trilithon in the town of Strakonice in order to demonstrate a method of lifting heavy lintels into place without modern machinery, hoping to show how Stonehenge could have been built. So like its closest Stonehenge replica neighbor, Stonehenge in der Oberpfalz, it qualifies as a Stonehenge replica because of the intention of its builders. More recent (and better) pictures than this one show an arc of boulders placed with it to form a circle.

Delightfully, Pavel Pavel’s interest in prehistoric stone-moving techniques resulted in another experiment. He also had an Easter Island head made of concrete and used it to show how those sculptures might have been walked over the land with the help of a surpisingly small number of people. (Does enjoying the eccentricities of automatically- translated pages make us bad people?)  So, while we are not certain, the town of Strakonice may qualify for our list of places* that have BOTH a Stonehenge replica and a moai. How did we not find this one sooner?!

Score: 5½ druids. It’s little more than a trilithon, after all. But it’s another proof of the world’s fascination with the Wiltshire wonder!

*Kennewick Stonehenge, Texas’s Stonehenge II, Harry Rossett’s Stonehenge, and Tom’s Stonehenge from the Gardens of Hope–and those are just the ones we know of!

Wood Block Henge, and The Story of Garden Henge

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photo by David Lewis, with permission

“Garden Henge was a very mysterious place. No-one knew who had built it, or how long ago it had been built, and there were all kinds of stories told about strange things that happened at Garden Henge at night.” It may be made of wood and open to the public, but I think we all know the reference being made in this charming bit of a children’s story. To clinch it we have the pictures. We challenge anyone to name another circle of uprights with lintels or with trilithons in the center. Stonehenge has no peer!

This henge is made of blocks from a wooden tower play set by Garden Games. It is like a giant Jenga game, for those of you who are more familiar with that. Jenga blocks, too, end up in their share of henges. As do blocks of all kinds, sometimes with unrealistically peaceful stuffed animals!

We found the story simple and charming, with just the right balance of peril and comfort for a young child. The toppling arch is a good reminder of why people are kept away from Stonehenge most of the time. Score: 7 druids for the story and the henge.

Sad that the real situation of Stonehenge keeps it from being the sort of thing that children might stumble upon in a story, hide under in a storm, and get spirited away to another time and place in the time-honoured tradition of the children’s fantasy tale!

Window of the World Stonehenge, Shenzhen!

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photo by Franklin Cardenas, with permission

Since starting this blog we have seen some miniature examples of gardens with scenes from other parts of the world. There was Cockington Green in Canberra, Babbacombe Model Village in Greater London, Miniwelt in Saxony, and of course Legoland Windsor. In Shenzhen, China, a city near Hong Kong, there is a not-so-miniature version of this idea, Window of the World.

It’s really the creme-de-la-creme of ersatz tourist worlds, and their Stonehenge replica does not disappoint. It is the most realistic replica yet, from what we can see in the pictures. The stones are convincingly stained to resemble lichen and please do check out the lintel-knob on top of the sarsen seen here [link]! Of course you have to watch out where you take the picture if you don’t want to get the Eiffel Tower in the background!

Beijing has a similar park, called The World Park and we will try to bring you that one another day, but we don’t think its Stonehenge can compare with this one. Score: 8 druids for the builders at Shenzhen, who, well, know how to make a good copy!

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