Category Archives for Uncategorized

Mysteries of Ancient Stonehenge, or What is resin, anyway?

toscano

from Toscano website

Taking the easy way out today, we’re posting a commercial Stonehenge replica, this one sold by Design Toscano, which sells mostly figurines and statuary for home and garden. This replica is made of resin of some kind painted to look like metal, resin pretty much being any substance that starts out viscous and ends up solid. At least when you buy it, you get a Certificate of Authenticity! 😛

It is a handsome little thing for the den or library if you have one. It looks well proportioned and includes both sarsen and bluestone features. The thing is, there’s something funny about a handsome little Stonehenge for your den. But these are the days of dragons for your den, gargoyles for your library and fairies for your desk, and for a lot of people, Stonehenge fits right in there. One man’s archaeological site is another man’s mystical fantasy.

So what do you think? How many druids do we give this Stonehenge that could double as a pen holder? Score: 5½ druids. It’s not funny enough to score big and yet–we can’t take it seriously!

Thinking of Avebury Replicas

aveburytable

Table once owned by Roger Bolton, photo by Pete Glastonbury— a model of Avebury as it is thought to have looked at its height

Time out from our mission here to look at Avebury replicas. There aren’t many, but they do exist. We have made a point so far of avoiding lintel-less stone circles unless there is something else special and Stonehenge-like about them. There are probably as many modern stone circles as there are Stonehenge replicas, and we had to draw the line somewhere.

Avebury, however, is a special case for several reasons, including physical closeness and probable other connections to Stonehenge as well as the  fact that at 427 meters in diameter it is the largest stone circle in the world.  Yet few replicas exist.

avebury-google-earth[Avebury on Google Earth] Although a great many of its stones are now missing, Avebury is one of the wonders of the British countryside and likely part of a ritual complex that included a megalithic avenue leading to it, Silbury Hill, the West Kennet Long Barrow, and other less well known but fascinating features. It, too, is a henge and roughly contemporary with Stonehenge, which is nearby, although Avebury’s stones probably went up first.

avebury-cots21[One of 2 Avebury models from the DVD The Children of the Stones] Somehow Avebury never acquired the cache Stonehenge has. Yet a few small replicas do exist, and this evening we present two, courtesy of Mr. P. Glastonbury, megarak and photographer extraordinaire. We won’t score them. To see more photos of Avebury itself and some high dynamic range panoramas of it and other places, visit Pete Glastonbury’s site. I suppose next we’ll have people making mounds of dirt and sending us pictures of Silbury Hill replicas. Even the aliens who make crop circles agree–there’s something about Wiltshire!

Share

Cheesehenge, non-virtual

cheesehenge

photo and henge by Kilaana, also see this one

Time for a foodhenge again. That the only cheesehenge we’ve posted so far was a virtual image is a situation that must be rectified, so we return to our henging friend Kilaana for her High Dynamic Range image of this Stonehenge of cheese. For her gardenhenge Kilaana hand cast the stones from cement. The cheese required less work, but she made up for it in the production of the photo.

Kilaana’s pictures make up 4/7 of the Cheesehenge Pool on Flickr, but on the web and apparently in the world, cheesehenges abound. They rank with straw and hay henges, blockhenges, boxhenges, beach stonehenges, cookie[biscuit]henges, and snowhenges (I know there are a few more), as the most frequently made–or at least posted–hengeworks.

As for scoring, we see in the other photos that Kilaana makes a point of placing a few trilithons in the middle of the linteled circle. And going to the trouble of merging three images just for a photo of a cheesehenge shows dedication that demands respect. Score: 6 druids for this yummy henge.

Tourist Trap, Proposed Stonehenge Model for Visitors’ Center, 1998

stonehenge-mir-2

photos from Stonehenge II proposal by Aleksandra Mir , more at link.

Posting two rather serious British-made Stonehenge models in a row may be a mistake but a permission we’d hoped for hasn’t come through. The two are very different.  Here “the proposal was to build a Stonehenge replica close to the original, to reduce the volume of pedestrian traffic and save this piece of cultural heritage from further destruction. To compensate for the necessary limited access to Stonehenge I, Stonehenge II would allow full access and promote a wide range of activities on its grounds.”

As you see, tourists would be encouraged to touch and enjoy the model if they wished. However, it seems to us that what tourists wish is to touch the ageless stones of the original, not false new stones, of whatever material.

stonehenge-mir-1This Stonehenge II has not been built, nor is it planned at this point. But as a model we must say that of all the miniatures this is most detailed and closest to the original. We even see Aubrey holes and certainly the ditch and bank, plus every stone correct in size and place. (We also enjoy the giant bird perched on one lintel.)

Scoring–well, keep in mind that we are looking at a model of a nonexistent replica, not a model of Stonehenge itself.  Still, we are forced to give this a good 8½ druids. Full sized, it woud have gotten the elusive 9½. But let’s face it–Peephenge and Cheese curl henge are a lot more fun!

Share

Henry Browne’s Cork Models–some real history

browne1

photos from the website of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, U.K.

Society often mocks those who are obsessed, but time and time again they are the ones who accomplish much and who see the need for action in their field  long before others do. Such a man was Henry Browne, who lived from 1769 to 1839 and devoted his later years entirely to the study, chronicling and protection of Stonehenge.

The story of how he made his first cork Stonehenge replica is told in a footnote to page 77 of the book  Stonehenge and its Barrows, by William Long. He brought his tools and materials to the site and did all he could to imitate every aspect of the monument as it stood then, in the year 1824. He also made models of his idea of how Stonehenge looked originally.

browne-reconstr

Browne may have been the first to notice that the lintels were kept in place with notches and grooves and the first to suppose that lintels originally went all the way around the outside circle. He was among the first to see that Stonehenge needed to be conserved and protected from tourists as well as local residents who broke up stones for building.

A photo of  a Browne model in the Haslemere Museum, taken by the distinguished gentleman from Surrey, Mr. Andy Burnham, originator and Grand Poobah of the highly esteemed Megalithic Portal, may be seen here. This humble blog is to the Megalithic Portal as a child’s wooden block Stonehenge replica is to Stonehenge itself and we are greatly in Mr. Burnham’s debt for providing such a resource!

As to score, well, this man did it right. 9½ druids for Mr. Browne’s models.  They are now, as Mr. Burnham says, precious artefacts themselves.

Miniature Stonehenge, Saxony, Germany

stonehenge-miniwelt

photo by Jan Herold, with permission

“Herzlich Willkommen!” says the Miniwelt website. Miniwelt or Miniworld is another park of miniatures, in some ways similar to Cockington Green in Australia or Babbacombe Gardens in England. And, of course, they have a Stonehenge all their own. Here is the official view, from their website.

miniweltWhat do you think? Are these worked stones or molded cement? Tough to say. [Later note: we have it from the photographer that they are indeed stone.] The proportions are certainly better than the Brisbane model and we like it a little better than Babbacombe’s, too. Legoland Windsor still wins when it comes to shape and proportions of the stone, I’m afraid.

The question people have put to us is, Where are the Avebury replicas? Why is it only Stonehenge? We think that a place like this would seem twice as classy if it replaced its Stonehenge with an Avebury, but we doubt it will ever happen!

Score? 6 druids. After all, we see some bluestones in there, and isn’t that a heelstone? Someone gets it, sort of.

Henges We Admire

We probably have 100 pictures in the Henge category on our bookmarks list. Many we hoped to post have proved elusive, most because emails and comments asking permissions for photos have gone unanswered. Since today has been a different kind of day in our world, here is a different kind of post. Normal posting will resume tomorrow, barring unforeseens. These are the best from among the  Stonehenge replicas we have been unable to post.

Plane Henge, another work by the Mutoid Waste Company, in Australia.

What appears to be a wooden Stonehenge model.

A mysterious miniature Stonehenge replica built on a little hill. If anyone knows where this is, please tell us!

iPod Shuffle henge.

A nice garden henge–with added Buddha and  Easter Island head! From, fittingly for today, the Obama Gardens of Hope.

Possibly the best-ever snow henge, those wacky Antarctica people once again! (Do we see bunny ears in there?!)

And one of our very favourites: a virtual glasshenge.

So there you are, some of the henges we’d been hoping to present. Maybe one or two of you will even decide to click on the links! Thank you for your continued interest. Aren’t people amazing? (And wouldn’t the inauguration ceremony have been enhanced by a Stonehenge replica set up somewhere on the Mall?!)

Beach Stonehenge: Welsh replica

penarth-henge

photo and henge work by mord and friend Joseph

Beaches are places where stones come together with people who have free time, so there are plenty of photos of henges made from beach stones. We’ve been waiting for some time, though, to find one as nice as this one. In most of the ones we’ve seen, inappropriate stone shapes blunt the impact of the henge structures.  In this case, however, mord must have had a picture in his head of a basic Stonehenge stone shape and searched for stones to match. Even the stone colours are close. Nicely done!

Of course, the circle is made entirely of trilithons with no inner horseshoe or rings, but compared to any other beach henge this one rules! The next best may be this picture from Lake Baikal,because it’s nice to be able to see  a henger in action.

The photo is nice here, too, with the pier echoing the henge structure and with shadows to suggest its sundial capabilities.  Score for this graceful Penarth Henge: 6 druids. And mord promises another when the weather gets better!

Back to Burning Man: Dead-computer-tower henge

computer-towers

photo by dratomic2012, with permission (free electronica music at link)

What is it with Burning Man? It seems that the link between the ancient or third-world shamanic mystique and modern cybertechnology, which  many instinctively feel, rises to the surface there (much as it does in some of the henge works of Simon Burrow).  Here we see an installation from the 2006 gathering–a Stonehenge replica made of dead CPUs (central processing units) or computer towers.

Lighting creates much of the drama here, with the red implying activity inside while cool green, which also lights the seared earth, illuminating the inactive. It gives the feeling of a structure in which the parts consult with one another, burning with a common fire.

Score: 6½ druids for this striking vision created from everyday junk that once was wondrous technology and now is coaxed into an ancient form of great psychological power. Modern life is complex!