Earthline Quarry Stonehenge, Barbury Horse Trials

stonhengejump1

photo from the promotional site of Barbury International

This structure was created for the horse trials at Barbury Castle, Marlborough. It’s not clear whether they are permanent or, more likely, put up just for the trials each year. It’s an odd one, with elements of Stonehenge and Avebury, presumably to create a number of challenges for the horses and riders competing there, not that we know much about the horse world.

Interesting to see a Stonehenge replica crop up in something connected with sport. It has been suggested that the original could have been a sports field of some sort, usually by people who have downed a few with friends! Stonehenge certainly lends a touch of class to any endeavor. Score: 5½ druids.

Posting may be sparse in the week coming up, as it looks to be a busy one in real life. In the meantime, if we have any readers near Cheswardine, U.K., Springhill Gardens in California, or any astronomical museum, planetarium, or observatory (we might name museums in Cincinatti and Boston, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the Granada Science Park in Spain, and French Camp, Mississippi), your help in acquiring pictures of their Stonehenge replicas would be greatly appreciated! We know they’re out there, but we just can’t get at them. We ask you, gentle readers, to give us a hand!

Former Fountain Henge, Warwick Uni, England

photo by Nick Howes, aka Jimmy Dustpan, with permission

The photographer’s explanation is that it was a fountain originally, “But since the water stopped it became just been a rather sad pile of rocks. As it’s a University campus it was only a matter of time before some students decided to repurpose it as a mini Stonehenge.” Interestingly put: ” . . . it was only a matter of time“? How many people would see it that way, besides us?

Look at it. The Stonehenge someone builds shows what Stonehenge is to him, and who he is. Sam Hill created a monument to soldiers. The astronomer builds an observatory. The clockmaker builds a timepiece. The artist makes a sculpture. The engineer grapples with method. The Stonehenge-obsessed creates a meticulous model. The gardener makes a folly. The pagan crafts a ritual space. The playful person creates a whimsy. Spinal Tap fans make little trilithons. Ahem. And so on.

That’s the reason for this blog. By looking at these replicas, we get a glimpse of what Stonehenge looks like to, or what it represents to, their creators. The answer to the question, “what is it about Stonehenge that has such a hold on people?” begins to look like “many things!” As with a Rorschach inkblot test, what we see in Stonehenge arises from who we are, and like a lake it draws our attention with its reflective quality.

Score: 5 druids. More proof that Stonehenge is a creature that reproduces by infecting minds!

Stonehenge at the Commonwealth Museum, Massachusetts

boston-3

photos from the Commonwealth Museum website

Once again, perseverance pays off. We saw a picture of this months ago and couldn’t find it until a search for Stonehenges at museums (there are plenty but few pictures!) turned it up. boston It’s hard to make out the entire construction. The single trilithon is accompanied by what appears to be a rectangular space enclosed with low standing stones. The site says: “You can tent Stonehenge and barbecue inside.” Now there’s a money-making scheme that English Heritage hasn’t tried. To our knowledge. One can just imagine an American celebrity wedding taking place in a tented-over Stonehenge. If only it weren’t so close to the A303!

boston2 Our Boston replica, however, has the advantage of an ocean view. Looks like a lovely place to spend an hour or two, but is it a Stonehenge replica? It is another example, like Stroudhenge and the California sculpture-which must-never-be-named, of a sculpture known as Stonehenge and not a true replica.

It does have a megalithic look, as of a collapsed chambered tomb with a trilithon entrance. Not a true replica, but you can bet we’ll visit on our next Boston trip! Score: 5 ½ druids. About time Massachusetts gets on the Large Permanent list!

Stonehenge in Other Worlds

blink3d-stonehenge

from a Geeks3d.com discussion of a virtual world development platform

With our April Fool’s Day post out of the way, we arrive at our 150th post. Unremarkable to you, perhaps, but when we started this folly we doubted we would make it to 40 before running out of replicas. Ha! And may we repeat, ha! At any rate, today we would like to address a different kind of Stonehenge replica than usual, the replica in a virtual world.

In Second Life, for example, we are told there is a Stonehenge near a castle (thumbnail at left by Jocgart). In other virtual worlds there are other virtual Stonehenges. A game called Hellgate: London had a Stonehenge with a different, darker look as you see in the photo below, from the blog Pumping Irony.

Interesting how the virtual replicas vary just as the real ones do, in color, shapes of and numbers of stones, the condition of the Stonehenge according to age. (Click on the photo at left or the thumbnails to see a larger version and its posting page.)

Below is another, which may also be from Second Life, photo by Toady. These virtual Stonehenges may capture, even better than real life replicas, meanings that Stonehenge has for people, its place in our psyches, individual and collective. Place of magic, place of battle, place of power, place of joy. It seems that as we recreate Stonehenge, we recreate some hidden powerful place in our imaginations, and no world we create can be complete without it!

News Just In

In a surprise move that is nevertheless not all that surprising, English Heritage announced today that Stonehenge and the surrounding landscape are to be sold to the U.S. amusement park corporation Six Flags Over Texas, who will take over the handling of the increasing tourist load and work to make the site “more exciting, accessible and user-friendly.” More here.

Sky Project Stonehenge Model

stonehenge-setup

photos from Digital History Wiki page, by Creative Commons license

This small replica was part of a project aimed at better understanding how people interact with presentations of historical subjects, one of a group of projects done under the tutelage of William J. Turkel of the University of Western Ontario. Note the computer monitors also showing Stonehenge.

stonehenge-model This made us think it would be great to set up computer monitors in a circle with a nice Stonehenge model in the middle, and have them all showing Stonehenge, constantly rotating. But back to the study, the conclusion arrived at here was that people are impatient and easily distracted, and, extrapolating, it’s difficult to teach us anything. Duh!

This is a nice little model, though, and we award it 6 druids. We want to add a couple of links to photos of small models we can’t get permissions for. Here is an early model, from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s (scroll down on that page, and note the other model in the background). And here is a very clean well-done model from the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, photo taken in 1964.

Clearly people have gone to great lengths to make these models accurate to their idea of what Stonehenge is or was. What is this hold it has on us? We’re four months into Clonehenge now, and we still don’t have an answer for that!

Snowhenge the Third, Antarctica Again: Sky-Blu

booking-stonehenge

photo by Rob Jarvis, with permission

Snowhenge time again. As some of you know, we favour Antarctic snowhenges when we can get them. We did a post on one, mentioned another in the post Henges We Admire, and here’s a third, equally nice, also from the planet’s nether regions! (No Bushmills visible in this one, though ;-))

Rob Jarvis of Highland Guides says: “The snow clonehenge was made at ‘Sky-Blu’ at the southernmost end of the Antarctic Peninsula. Sky-Blu is a blue ice runway maintained by the British Antartcic Survey (BAS) . . . I was working there and we must have had a few spare moments! The snow structure was done by ‘Baz’, a BAS mechanic posted down to Sky-Blu for a work stint!”

Commonly the builders of these things are very practical people, perhaps instinctively trying to balance their rational and intuitive sides by building (practical) a Stonehenge (symbolising the intuitive?). You have to be practical to live in Antarctica, but we suspect the land inspires awe!

Score: 7½ druids. Love that Antarctic action! Want some less exotic snowhenges? Here we go: One, two, three (don’t know what language that is, but we see the word druid in there!), four, and (scroll down for these): five, six, and seven! Oh, and good olde Bristol. Who knows–maybe a snowhenge was first and Stonehenge is just a copy!

Stonehedge Gardens, Tamaqua, Pennsylvania

stonehedge

photos from the Stonehedge Gardens website

This one isn’t really hengy enough. Still, its name is worth discussing and outdoor stone replicas are getting harder for us to find. Our searches meet with diminishing returns, although, truth to tell, we did find two today that we hope to post in the future!

stonehedge21 The site says: “The mission of Stonehedge Gardens is to provide a healing, sacred, inclusive environment for the cultivation of personal and community transformation and wellness through the gardens and nature, the arts and holistic education.” The gardens are said to be beautiful, but why Stonehedge? Perhaps to meld the spiritual implications of Stonehenge with the garden word hedge. We do think they spelled it that way on purpose, unlike some. (See the 3rd comment below for the real explanation.)

Stonehedge is the most common misspelling of Stonehenge, surpassing Stongehenge and Stonhenge. And there are others: Stongehedge, Stonhedge and the obvious Stone Henge. The internet has created an age when researchers must find all possible misspellings of their key words.

The benches here are meant to gently suggest a Stonehenge theme, not form a Stonehenge replica. It wouldn’t be fair to score them. We just wanted to discuss their name. Shame on us! Out of guilt, we’ll throw a handful of druids their way. Score: 5 druids. All this reminds us of a cartoon: [link]. Gardening time is upon us, folks–time to build your henges!

Heftyhenge: An Ill-fated Replica at Bennington

stonehen

henging and photo by Clark Perks, with permission

The compulsion of the henger is rarely described as starkly and rivetingly as it is on Clark Perks’ Stonehenge page. (Read it!) In a fit of certainty he obtained permission from his college and set about building a full-scale replica of the sarsen portion of Stonehenge, each stone a wood frame covered with plastic garbage bags! Like most replica builders he finished with a greater appreciation of the original builders and of the sheer size of Stonehenge itself.

“Not only was Stonehenge 97 feet in diameter it was also 24 feet tall, as high as a two-story building. I couldn’t really comprehend how high that was until I had actually bought the wood. Standing in the parking lot of the lumber yard, I stood one of the 24 foot 2 x 4s up against a building. I looked up and said, “Holy f***ing sh**, what have I gotten myself into?” Nevertheless, I plowed ahead.” [censored for Clonehenge]

The replica stood for only one day before being vandalised, but fortunately Clark had hired a plane and taken pictures while it still stood. We are impressed with the man. To wrangle something like that together in a few days and then have the forethought to get those photos requires a fine mind and a strong will.

Score: 8 druids. We love this, love that he did it and enjoyed his telling of it! We end with his words:

“What have I learned from Stonehenge? I don’t know. There are those that said it was my greatest work. Still others said it was the stupidest thing that I have ever done. In a way, they are both correct. It certainly is part of the reason I didn’t graduate from Bennington. But if I had it to do over again, I would. It was just something I had to do.”

Blockhenge Relocated

photo by deadeyebart a.k.a Brett

Now we have proof that henges, once assembled, turn into living things! This blockhenge, shown near the bottom of our Virtual Hengefest page, moved itself to a new location, and we know this due to its documentation by Brett Fernau, aka the Mad Henger, aka deadeyebart. We know he wouldn’t kid about something this serious!

The Flickr caption says, “Under mysterious circumstances, Blockhenge has been relocated and recreated. Its sudden reappearance has confused scientists who have stated that further study is needed. Personally, I think it’s evidence of alien activity.” It is soothing to know that scientists are working to solve the mystery, but we’ve been posting henges long enough to be convinced that aliens are not necessary as an explanation of peculiar activity on this planet! We carbon-based lifeforms do very well on our own, thank you.

This is a simple replica with no bluestones, altar stone, heel stone, or ditch and bank (although the square enclosure makes a gesture toward that element). It is nicely done, however, and appears to include two inner trilithons. Score: 6 druids. We like the view off the platform in the first picture. Maybe the henge moved there in order to take it all in!

CLONEHENGE

A blog about Stonehenge Replicas. We kid you not.

Author Archives for nancy wisser