LFMSS UK 2012: Ancient Stones of England

Green. Everywhere you look – light, dark, pastel, … green. The old red, white and blue (the old one, not the American one) may be the colours of the United Kingdom, but in this part of England, green is everywhere. As I write this, driving through the Salisbury Plain, I realized that with a grey sky, the only colour visible for miles around is green – from the fields to the hedges to the forests.

We left Bath this morning with stones on our minds. Stonehenge, surely an icon of the British Isles, awaited our pilgrimage, as it has for countless human beings for 5000 years. Though we don’t really know what the purpose of building this monolithic structure was, we do know that if functions as an accurate celestial time piece – somewhat like a sundial, but for the solstices and seasons rather than the hours of the day. An enormous amount of ingenuity and effort was needed for these ancient people to move these stones up to 240 miles to this spot in the Salisbury Plain. Theories abound about how they did it, but you can ask our bus driver Steve – he knows it was only with the assistance of aliens that they uprighted these 25 ton stoners and then placed capstones on top of them. Or, they built earthen ramps (digging the necessay dirt using deer shoulder blades in the absence of metal tools) and placed logs on them to make a sort of conveyer belt and dragged the stones up, dropping them into the holes that had been dug to hold them in place. I think the weather was perfect for our visit here – chilly wind and a bit of rain. These stones have withstood thousands of years of all sorts of weather – we can handle an hour in the elements. Especially if wearing tweed.

After Stonehenge, we were off to the largest stone circle in the British Isles in nearby Avebury. Sixteen times larger than Stonehenge in circumference, the Avebury stone circles actually have a village in the middle of them! I brought the students to the first stone we saw and invited them to touch it. You can’t do that at Stonehenge – it is roped off. But at Avebury, the stones are in open fields and you can walk amongst them as you please. I like to touch the stonework in the cathedrals we visit – and imagine my ancestors working those same stones, quarrying, chiseling, and setting them in place. The stones at Avebury were set in place by our ancestors before written history – human ingenuity, human hands working to create something sacred, something that will last beyond their short mortal tenure. These stones are evidence of people at the dawn of civilization, when humans moved beyond nomadic hunting and gathering to an agrarian lifestyle that actually gave them some leisure time – and time to build monuments to whatever they saw as sacred – like their descendants – the cathedral builders of the middle ages.

We enjoyed an excellent pub meal at Avebury’s only pub, the Red Lion, followed by a walk amongst the stones. Another wonderful day living in the present moment while contemplating the past.

Ray dares to sit in the Devil's chair in the Avebury stone circle!!!!

I too take my seat.

Andrew - the Inn Keeper at the Avebury Lodge - a friendly, mysterious man....

The Avebury Lodge - where my family stayed two years ago.

Jonathan - manager of the Red Lion Pub in Avebury. I've eaten lunch or dinner here every year for three years now.

The Red Lion Pub - the only one in town! And, the most haunted in Britain.

The Devil's Chair. In the Middle Ages, the Christians of the area believed that these stones were erected by the devil. So they tried to pull them down. But that resulted in a stone crushing one of the villagers to death, so they quit. Thankfully.