Tag Archives for mini Stonehenge

Pezhenge. Oh, yes.

pezhenge

photography and hengery by deadeyebart a.k.a. Brett, shown with permission

Truly we can say  that the thing which we have desired is now ours! We tracked down the Pezhenge in the Smithsonian video, and mad henger deadeyebart not only has generously allowed us to post it, but has pointed out other henges to be seen in his photostream on Flickr. Thank you, Mr. bart! No doubt more will appear here.

Take it all in, the giddying variety of Pez heads and the clever candy lintels. Poor Shrek even plays the part of a fallen upright. We know it isn’t accurate, but that’s not what this one is for, is it? Score: 7½ druids for being fully in the spirit of Clonehenge!

Cockington Green Stonehenge

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photo by Julie Anderson

Today it’s off to Canberra in Australia and Cockington Green Gardens, beds planted around crafted miniature buildings that portray places around the world, with the original section based on Great Britain. And you can’t have Great Britain without a Stonehenge replica, in this case complete with tiny tourists. (It must be a view of the past. When were tourists last permitted to wander among the stones?)

It’s a fascinating little replica, with its disproportionally tall and slender stones. Clearly the attempt is to portray Stonehenge as it now stands with some stones fallen. The tiny people seem to get moved around. Every picture we’ve seen shows them posed differently. The interesting thing here is seeing Stonehenge portrayed as a part of England and not as the timeless, placeless array of stones most replicas try to depict.

The nearby hedges certainly dampen the effect (one website calls it Stonehedge), but we allow for the fact that everything is more difficult to do in the southern hemisphere because it has to be done upside-down. We award 7 druids to the Stonehenge that could easily be crushed by a dwarf!

Cardboard Stonehenge, the blog

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photos from Cardboard Stonehenge, taken by Soo Martin

It’s a whole world we never dreamed existed, the world of the cardmodel kit. Moduni.com offers a great many of them, along with other kinds of models for building. Two people, Alan A. and Soo Martin, who work for a British archives service bought a Stonehenge cardmodel kit, decided to build it during their lunch breaks, and, to our good fortune, chose to blog about it for over 3 months as they did. The results are remarkable, as shown by the pictures above and below.

goodbye

(Is that the bunch from Fathers 4 Justice? Love the hat on the left!)

It’s not easy to make this post short, even more than with some other subjects we’ve tackled. We urge anyone with an informed interest in megaliths and Stonehenge to read the blog. It’s short. Many interesting points are made and musings noted, all in a mood of bemused fascination. Take, for example, their Meditations on Underground Access. These are people who have spent too much time thinking about sacred sites. Unlike us. Heh heh.

Anyway, scoring this one is difficult. This blog, with its interim models of glaciers moving  bluestones and of the Stonehenge underpass, with the taping off of the center stones by the Lego constabulary for solstice, with office leylines drawn, and photoshopped lines showing the forms said to be visible in the stones, etc., has completely bowled us over and it’s all we can do to keep from looking sappy by giving it a 9 ¾. It’s a manufactured model, for Sol ‘s sake! After a very cold shower, we give it eight Lego druids . . . maybe 8 ¾! Okay, someone click on Publish, quick!

The henge watch

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Christmas, I mean Yule, shopping? Here’s something for the megarak* on your list. “A great leap backwards in time telling!” Or as Yahoo News said, “Is that a megalithic monument in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?”

Yes, you get a tiny henge monument and a compass to help you use it to figure the time. “Every astronomical function that was intended by the original builders of Stonehenge can be accomplished with the watch.” Or so the makers claim. In case you’re not good at telling time with shadows, the outside of the watch has an analog watch face marked with Roman numerals.

There’s no denying this is a nifty thing. But how many druids does it score? Feeling generous after a big meal and an afternoon with family, we will award it 8 mini-druids. And it will fit in a stocking hung on your mantlepiece!

*megarak: portmanteau word formed from megalith and anorak, meaning one who is very interested in (possibly even obsessed by) megaliths, standing stones, stone circles, etc.

Plasticine henge

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A henge of Plasticine (much like Playdough, for those on the left bank of the Atlantic), made and photographed by Alice Yeah on Flickr. It is part of the Flickr Thinghenge group, which is, for us, a thing of great wonder. We hope to bring you more from there over time.

She says she was inspired by a film (I think we all know what film she means!) to make a little Stonehenge and first tried making it with lolly (popsickle) sticks wrapped with coloured wool, then moved on to plasticine. She likes “the concentric arrangement and the shapes of the stones.”

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The colo(u)rs here are pleasing, too, and she took care to make it resemble the real Stonehenge with some  flat stones and a limited number of lintels. Nice, too, that we have an aerial view . . . Score: 6 ½ druids. Those stone shapes are good. It’s close to a seven. Thank you, Alicia!

The smallest henge?

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Scientists at the National University of Singapore, testing out a process called silicon micromachining, chose to make this Stonehenge microstructure with a proton beam writer. “The proton beam writer, housed at the NUS Centre for Ion Beam Applications, can focus proton beams to diameters of less than 50 nanometres (about 2,000th the diameter of a human hair).” Why they chose to make a Stonehenge replica is not mentioned on the site, but we’re glad they did!

This pseudo-Stonehenge, created on a silicon wafer, gets our highest score yet: 8 druids!

Sausage henge: the fun begins

Of course, a lot of Stonehenge replicas are made of less realistic materials. Well known examples, ones we will get to, include Carhenge and Fridgehenge and Banksy’s famous henge built of portable toilets, but the henge replicas of the people, so to speak, are the food henges.

Any food will do, it seems. Here is a simple example, a sausage henge, complete with spaghetti-os.

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from the BBC

Not accurate or especially good looking, but this one gets extra points for using round lintels, which is touchy, and for sheer audacity!

Score: seven druids!

If you need a kit . . .

Think Geek, a sales site full of goodies that appeal to the computer (ahem) enthusiast, shall we say?, offers this Build Your Own Stonehenge Kit.

Love it!

Love it!

Not a bad price, either.

Good-looking as it is, however, we can only score it seven druids out of ten, because, hey, it’s manufactured. Still, I simply must have one. Hear that, Santa?

[We did receive one as a belated Christmas gift. Thank you, Santa–you are listening after all!]

Obiehenge

Viewed from a distance.

Viewed from a distance.

Built of construction debris, a short-lived henge on the Oberlin College campus a few years ago.

As is often the case, it’s really just a few trilithons, but it would be very impressive if you were a mouse.

As is often the case, it's really just a few trilothons. Nice proportions, though, with a sturdy look.

Sturdy proportions.

Thank you to Jonas Wisser for the images! They are still posted on the site of OPAN, the Oberlin Pagan Awareness Network, here.

Obiehenge score: six druids out of a possible ten.