Stonehenge as sculpture and installation art

Sir Philip Sidney, Certain Sonnets 22:

“Near Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stone are found;
But so confused, that neither any eye
Can count them just, nor reason reason try
What force brought them to so unlikely ground.”

Siegfried Sasoon, The Heart's Journey, IX:

What is Stonehenge? It is the roofless past;
Man's ruinous myth; his uninterred adoring
Of the unknown in sunrise cold and red;
His quest of stars that arch his doomed exploring.
And what is Time but shadows that were cast
By these storm-sculptured stones while centuries fled?
The stones remain; their stillness can outlast
The skies of history hurrying overhead.

William Wordsworth:

Pile of Stone-henge! so proud to hint yet keep
Thy secrets, thou that lov’st to stand and hear
The Plain resounding to the whirlwind’s sweep
Inmate of lonesome Nature’s endless year...

(from Guilt and Sorrow; or, Incidents upon Salisbury Plain)

Katharine Lee Bates, At Stonehenge:

Grim stones whose gray lips keep your secret well,
Our hands that touch you touch an ancient terror,
An ancient woe, colossal citadel
Of some fierce faith, some heaven-affronting error.
Rude-built, as if young Titans on this wold
Once played with ponderous blocks a striding giant
Had brought from oversea, till child more bold
Tumbled their temple down with foot defiant...


Alfred Williams, Stonehenge:

"Speak, you dumb stones!..."

"But ye are silent, harking not the call."


Alexander Craig, from To His Calidonian Mistris (1604):

“…those stones on Sarum plaine,
Which Merlin by his Magicke brought, some saine,
By night from farr I-erne to this land,
Where yet as oldest Monuments they stand”

Whatever the theories about the origins of Stonehenge, in terms of intentions and function, I prefer to read it as a stone sculpture, as environmental installation art set in the Salisbury Plain landscape, an assembly (or partial re-assembly) of standing stones, uprights and lintels, designed as two circles and two horsehoes of stones. The art-work we see is incomplete, as many stones have disappeared. Some fallen stones have been re-erected.

The sculptor-designer was clearly an artistic giant, or a giant of an artist, assumed by early writers to be none other than Merlin the Wizard (Ambrose Merlin, the prince of enchanters).

As good a theory (or myth) as any that I've heard!

In the past visitors could walk amongst the stones, touch them and climb on top of some of them- as I well remember being able to do. One of my official HMSO guide-books (1955) starts:

"The visitor to Stonehenge will most probably have walked to the centre of Stonehenge before he begins to read this guide..."

We only have ourselves to blame if this is no longer possible. A slightly later HMSO guide-book (1959) states that "Many stones are now missing altogether, and others survive only as stumps below ground level; while the soil as far out as the car-park is filled with fragments of the stones which have been broken up. Much of this destruction is certainly due to visitors, who delighted in knocking off fragments as keepsakes. Indeed, at one time a hammer could regularly be hired in Amesbury for this very purpose. One must remember, too, that there is no natural building-stone available in the neighbourhood, so that from the Middle Ages onwards Stonehenge must have provided a convenient quarry for local builders. It is known, too, that up to about a century ago the local farmers used regularly to break up the smaller stones for road metal, to repair farm tracks. Many of the bluestones have probably disappeared in this way."

Lots of little Lord Elgins! It seems that we are lucky that a single stone has been left standing. The site is still threatened by nearby road traffic.

What has happened to that important plan to build a tunnel for the nearby road, so that Stonehenge can stand undisturbed in its natural environment? That should have been a priority before the 2012 Olympic Games, but the plan for an underground tunnel was abandoned by the government in 2005. Stonehenge was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.

STOP PRESS

Today, 17 June, the British Government shelved plans to help fund a Visitor Centre, and cut up to £25 million pounds which was to have gone towards this project. I have heard the argument being made that it was not a good idea to rush this project in time for the Olympic Games, given that it did not include the underground tunnel and that it would have increased the size of the car parking area.

Is it not better to wait until the country can afford to do the job properly? It has to be seen in the light of other priorities. Far sadder to hear of decisions to cancel planned new hospital projects, or of the closure of essential wards.

Update, March 2013 The Croods, Stonehenge: Not to be missed in 3D!