Wiltshire
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Wiltshire
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Wiltshire has a very interesting landscape and has many ancient archaeological sites and monuments. Stonehenge: There is nothing quite like Stonehenge anywhere in the world and for 5000 years it has drawn visitors to it. We shall never know what drew people here over the centuries or why hundreds of people struggled over thousands of years to build this monument, but visitors from all over the world come to marvel at this amazing feat of engineering. Before Stonehenge was built thousands of years ago, the whole of Salisbury Plain was a forest of towering pines and hazel woodland. Over centuries the landscape changed to open chalk downland. What you see today is about half of the original monument, some of the stones have fallen down, others have been carried away to be used for building or to repair farm tracks and over centuries visitors have added their damage too. About 2,000 BC, the first stone circle (which is now the inner circle), comprised of small bluestones, was set up, but abandoned before completion. The stones used in that first circle are believed to be from the Prescelly Mountains, located roughly 240 miles away, at the southwestern tip of Wales. The bluestones weigh up to 4 tons each and about 80 stones were used, in all. Given the distance they had to travel, this presented quite a transportation problem. The giant sarsen stones (which form the outer circle), weigh as much as 50 tons each. To transport them from the Marlborough Downs, roughly 20 miles to the north, is a problem of even greater magnitude than that of moving the bluestones. Most of the way, the going is relatively easy, but at the steepest part of the route, at Redhorn Hill, modern work studies estimate that at least 600 men would have been needed just to get each stone past this obstacle. Visit the English Heritage website at www.english-heritage.org.uk for in depth information about Stonehenge and other ancient monuments in Wiltshire. Avebury: Twenty miles north of Stonehenge stands Avebury, the largest known stone ring in the world. Older than the more famous Stonehenge, and for many visitors far more spectacular, the multiple rings of Avebury are cloaked with mysteries which archaeologists have only begun to unravel. Similar to Stonehenge and many other megalithic monuments in the British Isles, Avebury is a composite construction that was added to and altered during several periods. As the site currently exists, the great circle consists of a grass-covered, chalk-stone bank that is 1,396 feet in diameter (427 meters) and 20 feet high (6 meters) with a deep inner ditch. Just inside the ditch, which was clearly not used for defensive purposes, lies a grand circle of massive and irregular sarsen stones enclosing approximately 28 acres of land. This circle, originally composed of at least 98 stones but now having only 27, itself encloses two smaller stone circles. The two inner circles were probably constructed first, around 2600 BC, while the large outer ring and earthwork dates from 2500 BC. The construction of the Avebury complex must have required enormous efforts on the part of the local inhabitants. The sarsen stones, ranging in height from nine to over twenty feet and weighing as much as 40 tons, were first hewn from bedrock and then dragged or sledded a distance of nearly two miles from their quarry site. These stones were then erected and anchored in the ground to depths between 6 and 24 inches. The excavation of the encircling ditch required an estimated 200,000 tons of rock to be chipped and scraped away with the crudest of stone tools and antler picks . . Only 1500 meters south of the main Avebury rings stands Silbury Hill, the largest, and perhaps the most enigmatic, of all megalithic constructions in Europe. Crisscrossing the surrounding countryside are numerous meandering lines of standing stones and mysterious underground chambers, many positioned according to astronomical alignments. Perhaps the most astonishing revelations of Avebury's ancient grandeur have come through the recent research of John Michell, Paul Broadhurst and Hamish Miller. Drawing upon legends and folklore, archaeological excavations and dowsing, these specialists have determined that the Avebury temple was part of a vast network of neolithic sacred sites arranged along a nearly two-hundred mile line stretching all across southern England. Positioned directly on this line are the great pilgrimage sites of Glastonbury Tor and St.Michael's Mount. (For more information on this line and the sites along it, consult Hamish Miller's book, The Sun and the Serpent.) http://www.sacredsites.com/europe/england/avebury.html Salisbury: The story begins at a place called Old Sarum, two miles north of modern
Salisbury. It was known to be an Iron Age earthwork and later became a Roman
fort. In Saxon times was an important political centre, a Witenagemot being held
there in 960 AD. In 1070, William the Conqueror reviewed his troops there and it
became a Bishopric with a Cathedral and a Castle. The old Cathedral fell into
ruin and many of its stones were used to build a new Cathedral in Salisbury.
Situated at the confluence of four rivers, Salisbury is the only city within the
county of Wiltshire. Stourhead: An outstanding example of the English landscape style, this splendid garden was designed by Henry Hoare II and laid out between 1741 and 1780. Classical temples, including the Pantheon and Temple of Apollo, are set around the central lake at the end of a series of vistas, which change as the visitor moves around the paths and through the magnificent mature woodland with its extensive collection of exotic trees. Built in the 1720s the mansion was home to the Hoare family, owners of Britain's only independent private bank surviving to the present.
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Last edited on the 11 May 2008 20:03:21 |
.jpg "Setting up the picnic at Stourhead's Fete Champetre.")
.jpg "Jazz recital at Stourhead.")
.jpg "View over Stourhead lake.")
.jpg "Stourhead Lake")
.jpg "The Lake at dusk.")
.jpg "Party goers at Fete Champetre.")
