By now, the ruins of Stonehenge were far easier for visitors to understand, and the monument had been thoroughly investigated. Only the excavation season had been published in an academic journal, and Atkinson had also published a popular book, Stonehenge , in Stonehenge visitors viewing the works at Stonehenge in the early s. The extended car park is visible in the distance. Many now owned cars and had the time and money to take holidays.
Stonehenge made a good stopping point en route to coastal resorts in south-west England. Gradual changes were made to cater for visitors. By there were new underground lavatories, and in the car park was extended. Three years later an automated ticket machine was installed to alleviate queues. Visitors strolling freely around the stones in the s, after the interior had been gravelled over to help protect it.
More problematic was the interior of the stone circle, which the feet of countless tourists turned into a quagmire each winter. The interior was surfaced with gravel in , protecting the fragile archaeology. As the excavations of the s and s showed, the complicated archaeology at Stonehenge lies only just below the surface and has many more secrets yet to reveal.
Top image: photograph showing scaffolding around the re-erected trilithon. Susan Greaney. Susan is an archaeologist in the Properties Research team at English Heritage, working mostly on prehistoric sites and monuments. Below: Two photographs by Lady Antrobus of the great trilithon stone 56 before it was straightened in The upper image shows it leaning hard over onto bluestone 68 , which can be seen here in the foreground to the right.
Detmar Blow, architect. Carruthers advised upon engineering questions. Excavations were made both in front of and behind the leaning stone 56 and its fallen and broken partner stone A Roman coin a sestertius of Antonia and a George III penny were found at a shallow depth , and many chippings of both the blue and the sarsen stones. Numerous flint axe-heads and large stone hammers weighing from 37 to 64lbs were also found at a depth of from 2 feet to 3 feet, 6 inches.
A pick of deer antler was found close to the bottom of one of the holes. Interestingly, a stain of bright green the colour of corroded bronze marked a sarsen block seven feet down. Lady Antrobus also observed that animal bones had been found. Stone 56 is just short of 30ft long and more than 8 ft of it was embedded in the ground, originally holding the lintel 21 feet above the ground.
Its partner, stone 55, was only 25 feet long and had to be held in place with a little over 4 feet of its base set in chalk. The base of the stone was found to be at a depth of 8 feet 6 inches in the ground and the surface worked with flint tools.
It was beautifully set, showing great knowledge on the part of the builders … There are further questions of the raising of the two stones which fell last year, the original positions of which are accurately known, also of certain precautionary measures to be taken to prevent the falling of other stones which are in danger.
I consider this to be a false argument, as Stonehenge, if left severely alone, would soon present the appearance of a jumbled heap of ninepins, many of the stones having reached a condition when they are liable to be blown down by any gale from the west, such as the one experienced last year.
After Stonehenge was subsequently sold at auction on 21 September here as a direct result of the tragedy of the first world war which devastated the Antrobus family here , it was bequeathed to the nation in and the Office of Works subsequently became responsible for the upkeep of the monument. William Hawley excavated at Stonehenge between and He righted six stones, enabling the removal of the unsightly larch poles which had previously been supporting them.
He set these stones in concrete beds after excavating the sockets. In Professor Richard Atkinson and other archaeologists began a thirteen year period of excavations and restoration work at Stonehenge.
In the work of lifting the west trilithon began. Below: The fallen west trilithon stone 58 in the central foreground with stone 57 behind and to the right their lintel before re-erection.
The two bluestones 69 and 70 , in the foreground to the left here, were removed, replaced and straightened in Indeed it is remarkable that these two stones had not fallen long before , so insecurely they were rooted in the ground. This shallow depth doubtless accounts for the absence of any well-defined ramp leading down to the holes. In both cases, however, it was clear that the stones had been raised from the outside, that is from the northwest, or indeed approximately from the positions in which they lay after they fell.
In both holes, on the inner side, were traces of decayed anti-friction stakes which had served to protect the back of the hole from being crushed by the toe of the stone, as it was being raised. Interestingly, in the next paragraph Professor Atkinson adds some additional observations in respect of the original erection of stone 56 , which had been straightened by Professor Gowland and his team in There can be no doubt that this ramp was used in the erection of stone And for this purpose a ramp would indeed be very necessary, since the bottom of the stone hole lies about 8 ft below the present ground surface, far deeper than in the case of any of the other sarsen stones of which we have details.
The position of this ramp makes it clear that stone 56 was either put up sideways, lying initially on its narrower western edge; or else, if it originally lay flat on its broad face, must have been turned through ninety degrees after it was upright. Either of these proceedings must have been more than ordinarily hazardous, and we can only assume that there was some very compelling reason for departing from more straight forward methods of erection.
Below: These three photographs were taken in May Now 71, Richard Woodman-Bailey was just 8 years old when his father, then the chief architect for ancient monuments, allowed him to place a commemorative coin beneath one of the lintels before it was set in place. This year, the Royal Mint invited Woodman-Bailey to strike a new commemorative coin that will be placed in the newly applied mortar.
Per the Guardian , vintage photos depict 20th-century workers smoking pipes and wearing suits as they restored the ancient monument. This time around, engineers will use protective gear and scaffolding, taking extensive caution as they work on the fragile archaeological site.
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