For the past 4,500 years, Stonehenge, an architectural monument in the Salisbury Plain, 140 kilometers from London, England, has been punished for all kinds of weather and human activity. Nevertheless, it bravely resisted the signs of the times, being considered a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Fascination is permissible. The local ruins tell a story of the Neolithic age and of people who began to settle in communities and create habits and instruments to maintain daily life in the area. Only parts of the rock that once formed a concentric circle and were arranged according to the position of the sun during the summer and winter solstices, probably for performing religious or funeral rites at the site – do not have enough material to determine them. Function. That’s right. Since last week, technicians have occupied the tourist spot to repair cracks and holes in prehistoric megaliths, one of the largest conservation works performed in decades.
The Stone Numbering System, created by William Flinders Petrie in 1880, coincides with the early modern period of Stonehenge restoration. The first recorded intervention came a year later, to stop the collapse of a megalith. In early 1893, the then visitor of the ancient monuments warned that many blocks were at risk of collapse. Seven years later, on the eve of the New Year, in the early 20th century, a storm broke the rock number 22, which fell completely in the autumn, and the lintel (as the horizontal blocks are called) number 122, which fell to pieces. The two pieces so violently that it found the ground. It has been more than a century since such incidents were recorded. The most extensive and recent recovery dates are the late 50’s and early 60’s, and the left legacy that needs to be corrected by the end of the current recovery process.
The works are now being coordinated by the organization responsible for the preservation and maintenance of English Heritage, English Heritage, the country’s monuments. One of the stones that the team will examine more closely is the exact number 122, whose broken pieces in the autumn of 1900 were “glued together” with concrete mortar in 1958. The recovered piece was replaced in its original position, as a beam above the two. Other verticals. In 2018, when a team of archaeologists and geologists discovered that some sandstone blocks had been brought from Westwoods, a forest 25 kilometers away, the technicians identified that the silt had caught the cracks and fallen to pieces.
The new conservation project brings an element of curiosity. Some people involved in the intervention were contacted in the late 1950s. Among them was Richard Woodman-Bailey, who was then only 8 years old. His father, TA Bailey, then chief architect of the ancient monument, who led the restoration work, gave him the privilege of placing a coin under one of the megaliths. The English Heritage and Royal Mint, the British Mint, arranged for the 71-year-old to return to Stonehenge in another commemorative piece of silver – specially made for the occasion – inside a new mortar that would hold the pieces together. Horizontal block place. “Thanks to technology and our observation, the rocks will now be able to stand the test of time,” said Heather Sebier, curator of Stonehenge. Thank you humanity.
Published in VEJA, September 29, 2021, issue 2757