This guest blog by Wiltshireman Prof. Dr Terence Meaden is an ode partly written in Wiltshire country dialect. It is a companion piece to the Silent Earth blog dated on 6 June 2019 about the summer solstice sunrise and the core meaning of Stonehenge. A link to the original post is here. In the Stonehenge blog of 2019 it was explained how the planners’ concepts and belief in the Marriage of the Gods, or hieros gamos, was translated by the Stonehenge planners into watchable dynamic action involving stone-to-stone union by the Heel Stone’s moving shadow and its penetration into the female fertility monument that is Stonehenge. It is a joy to watch. Unfortunately, every year on 21 June great crowds stand in the path of ... Read More

This guest blog by Wiltshireman Prof. Dr Terence Meaden is an ode partly written in Wiltshire country dialect. It is a companion piece to the Silent Earth blog dated on 6 June 2019 about the summer solstice sunrise and the core meaning of Stonehenge. A ... Read More

Dr Terence Meaden Explains the Core Meaning of Stonehenge as Achieved by Shadow Casting of the Heel Stone upon the Altar Stone at Midsummer Sunrise A guest post for Silent Earth prepared May 2019 In this blog the archaeological decoding of the fundamental symbolism of Stonehenge is explained. The monument’s master plan was prepared by a Stonehenge architect about 2550 BCE, this being the reasonable date assignable to the raising of the biggest sarsen stones, which are in the middle of the monument. These biggest stones surround a central zone inside which the Altar Stone lies recumbent at the focus of the monument. The great sarsens of Stonehenge would have been set in place before the sarsen stones of the outer ring of lintelled sarsens. ... Read More

Dr Terence Meaden Explains the Core Meaning of Stonehenge as Achieved by Shadow Casting of the Heel Stone upon the Altar Stone at Midsummer Sunrise A guest post for Silent Earth prepared May 2019 In this blog the archaeological decoding of the fundamental symbolism of ... Read More

A guest post by Peter Norton   A ruinous chapel hidden in woodland with streams, birds and trees for company and only accessible by foot. St Luke's Chapel was built on land given to Cistercian monks from Netley Abbey by a local landowner around 1246, but after the 1500s (Dissolution) the community left and the chapel fell into obscurity and all that remains now is the western end.     A small alter has been constructed from the debris, and a wooden crucifix resides over the graves of Sir David and Lady Olga Milne-Watson, who actually built the large house nearby in the early 1920s. They so loved the chapel that they saved what you see today and requested that their mortal remains be interred ... Read More

A guest post by Peter Norton   A ruinous chapel hidden in woodland with streams, birds and trees for company and only accessible by foot. St Luke's Chapel was built on land given to Cistercian monks from Netley Abbey by a local landowner around 1246, ... Read More

Sometimes described as the 'oldest road in Britain', the Harrow Way ('Harroway', 'Old Way', 'hard' or 'old' road) is a trackway of great antiquity running east-west across southern England. My interest in its passage particularly across the Stonehenge landscape and environs was first aroused on reading an article by Alex Down 'On Trackways and Place-names', published on Dennis Price's blog Eternal Idol on August 17, 2013. L.V. Grinsell's The Archaeology of Wessex, published in 1958, observes 'The origin of the name is uncertain: derivations of the name have been suggested from har (hoary with age), herewag (military road), and hearg weg (the road to the shrine or holy place, doubtfully Stonehenge).' In Aubrey Burl's 'Stonehenge', published in 2006, he writes: 'The Harroway led for miles ... Read More

Sometimes described as the 'oldest road in Britain', the Harrow Way ('Harroway', 'Old Way', 'hard' or 'old' road) is a trackway of great antiquity running east-west across southern England. My interest in its passage particularly across the Stonehenge landscape and environs was first aroused on ... Read More

In an article published in the recently published October edition of Wiltshire Life, public historian Brian Edwards predicts another short tunnel is about to be announced by Highways England as the preferred route for the A303 at Stonehenge. Those regularly travelling the A303 will be familiar with the locations where the entrances to this tunnel are likely to be positioned, because they know where the pigs and the strawberry sellers will be spotted, he says. If you are familiar with the fields where the pigs can be spotted from the A303 in the World Heritage Site, says Edwards, the field south of the current road in which pigs will be spotted nearest to the stones is likely to be the site of the new western ... Read More

In an article published in the recently published October edition of Wiltshire Life, public historian Brian Edwards predicts another short tunnel is about to be announced by Highways England as the preferred route for the A303 at Stonehenge. Those regularly travelling the A303 will be ... Read More

Last year, N.D. Wiseman, the Stonehenge expert and author of Stonehenge and the Neolithic Cosmos  kindly sent me a detailed illustration he has crafted of the features, stones and post holes that existed at Stonehenge approximately 5000 years ago. Of this time, Aubrey Burl writes, 'The beginning of Stonehenge is an introduction to confusion. It is a kaleidoscope of shifting images, of which only one can be correct ... The early site is as insubstantial as a garden cobweb after rain, shimmeringly attractive but broken with holes and torn threads'. A good starting point for an analysis of what is known of the monument on the site at this time is the overview provided on English Heritage's website, which states: 'It is possible that features ... Read More

Last year, N.D. Wiseman, the Stonehenge expert and author of Stonehenge and the Neolithic Cosmos  kindly sent me a detailed illustration he has crafted of the features, stones and post holes that existed at Stonehenge approximately 5000 years ago. Of this time, Aubrey Burl writes, ... Read More

The modern story of restorations at Stonehenge begins in 1880 when the site was surveyed by William Flinders-Petrie, who also established the numbering system for the stones that is in use to this day. The very first documented intervention to prevent stone collapse at Stonehenge happened in 1881 and is described here by Simon Banton.  In 1893, the Inspector of Ancient Monuments determined that several stones were in in danger of falling and he was subsequently proved correct when stone 22 collapsed in a New Year's Eve storm on 31 December 1900. The stone remained intact and was not damaged, but lintel-122 broke into two pieces with such a shock that a fragment was found 81 ft away. They were the first stones to fall ... Read More

The modern story of restorations at Stonehenge begins in 1880 when the site was surveyed by William Flinders-Petrie, who also established the numbering system for the stones that is in use to this day. The very first documented intervention to prevent stone collapse at Stonehenge ... Read More

A guest review of Dr. Terence Meaden's recently published book Stonehenge, Avebury and Drombeg Stone Circles Deciphered, by Simon Banton the archaeoastronomer. Dr G. Terence Meaden, M.A., M.Sc. D.Phil., F.R.Met.S. is a professional physicist, meteorologist and archaeologist with undergraduate and doctoral degrees in physics from Oxford University and an MSc in archaeology from Oxford University. He has made significant contributions to research in solid state physics (1957-1972), tornado climatology (1972-2014) and Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology (1981-2016), with  over 200 papers and numerous books published.     The complex interplay of light and shadow at megalithic monuments is a mostly unremarked phenomenon. For those people who gather at these sites on significant days of the year, the focus -- and the direction of their gaze -- ... Read More

A guest review of Dr. Terence Meaden's recently published book Stonehenge, Avebury and Drombeg Stone Circles Deciphered, by Simon Banton the archaeoastronomer. Dr G. Terence Meaden, M.A., M.Sc. D.Phil., F.R.Met.S. is a professional physicist, meteorologist and archaeologist with undergraduate and doctoral degrees in physics from Oxford ... Read More

On Friday 29 July 2016, I was given the opportunity to take a flight over the Stonehenge landscape in an Ikarus C42 microlight airplane from Clench Common airfield south of  Marlborough with GS Aviation. Below: Approaching from the north in the late afternoon, the first feature north of Amesbury and to the northeast of Stonehenge that comes into view is the enormous ditch and bank of Durrington Walls where excavations were carried out by the Stonehenge Riverside Project in 2008, outlined here. The patch of chalk to the lower left of this photograph is a trench being dug in anticipation of excavations carried out during August 2016, which are described in a series of National Trust blog posts here.   [caption id="attachment_3106" align="aligncenter" width="743"] Durrington Walls[/caption] ... Read More

On Friday 29 July 2016, I was given the opportunity to take a flight over the Stonehenge landscape in an Ikarus C42 microlight airplane from Clench Common airfield south of  Marlborough with GS Aviation. Below: Approaching from the north in the late afternoon, the first ... Read More

Since approximately 2500 BC, countless millions of eyes have gazed upon Stonehenge and millions of feet have circled the stones. In more recent times, the written word regarding Stonehenge has also become countless. The earliest surviving written references to Stonehenge date from the medieval period and this first notice was recorded in approximately 1130 by a gentleman we know today as Henry of Huntingdon, an archdeacon at Lincoln, who was commissioned by Bishop Alexander of Blois to write a history of England. 'Stanenges, where stones of wonderful size have been erected after the manner of doorways, so that doorway appears to have been raised upon doorway; and no one can conceive how such great stones have been so raised aloft, or why they were built ... Read More

Since approximately 2500 BC, countless millions of eyes have gazed upon Stonehenge and millions of feet have circled the stones. In more recent times, the written word regarding Stonehenge has also become countless. The earliest surviving written references to Stonehenge date from the medieval period ... Read More