Stones and Snowdrops

What a weekend of poetry I have had!  In addition to my monthly Poetic Licence workshop on Sunday, Friday was the annual Voices In The City Day at Bath Central Library, part of Bath Festival of Literature and always a highly enjoyable occasion.  Then, on Saturday I went to Avebury with Hazel Hammond to take part in a workshop run by poets Jo Bell (a former archaeologist) and Martin Malone.  

We arrived in Avebury with snow falling, which was ironic given that the original workshop focusing on the stones had to be postponed in January because of feet of the stuff lying on the ground.  This time it was as fine as grains of salt, however, and didn't pitch. The wind still had a set of sharp teeth, however. 

First off was a tour of the site.  Avebury is a strange place. Unlike Stonehenge, where the stones stand in magnificent isolation, the village has encroached on the henge and despite the original archaeologist, Alexander Keiller, and the National Trust taking it upon themselves to demolish part of village, the better to show off the stones, there's still an odd sense of the unfathomable hugger-mugger with bricked and tiled domesticity.  I love the majesty of Stonehenge, but also adore the very clear impression of historical layers you get at Avebury.  

And of course you can still get close enough to read the lichen maps covering the sarsen stone.

After a while we began to turn to stone, so we adjourned to the cosy National Trust study centre for tea, chocolate biscuits and some stimulating writing exercises about our own personal landscapes.  

After lunch in the cafe, Hazel and I visited the museums, Avebury Manor and the Church of St James.  The rooms of the Manor were disappointing, having been done up like sets from different eras for a BBC television programme with Penelope Keith in it.  I suppose that every National Trust interior, with the exception of somewhere like Mr Straw's House which has retained all of its chattels, is to a certain extent fake, but this was flimsy and hollow fakery.  There was no sense at all of its history, no trace of who once lived there.  Boo!  Though at least there are none of those teasels and kids can jump on the beds.

The Church of St James is built very close to the stones, reputedly to counteract their supposed malevolence.  (I think we're straying into Marianne Dreams territory here).  For me, the its jewel was the Norman tub font, designed for total immersion and  carved with a bishop carrying a crozier and two serpents. 

Outside, the sun had come out and there were nebulae on the gravestones,

not to mention to mention snowdrops and sunshine. Time to stop hibernating. 

A Pile of Old Stones

I had a two hour window of opportunity while Son the Elder was tea partying in Salisbury today, so I bundled him out of the car and belted up the road to Stonehenge.  

The facilities at this World Heritage Site are as down as heel as ever, although work has apparently started on the inordinately long-awaited 'state-of-the-art Visitors' Centre'.

You do have to wonder about the wisdom of the prehistoric people who chose this site, however - I mean, why so close to the A344 AND the A303?

Actually, considering the stones are supposed to have come from the Preseli Hills, 180 miles away, they missed a trick.  They could have just schlepped them down to Saundersfoot, sailed them across the Bristol Channel, then up the Rivers Torridge and Okement and they'd only have been a stone's throw (so to speak) from Dartmoor.  Which already has lots of stone circles and rows of its own.  You can go up there in August and not see a soul all day.  How much more atmospheric would that have been?   :-)  

As it is, you're no longer allowed to touch the stones, or even go within twenty feet of them.  I have a clear memory of climbing on them as a very young child, and being overwhelmed by their size and age.  My kids never got the chance to do that, thanks to the intolerance and spite of the loathsome Margaret Thatcher, although since 1999 there is access at the solstices and equinoxes.

I wonder if Constable or Turner would have included a No Entry sign if they were painting or sketching Stonehenge today?  And where would Hardy have Tess arrested for the murder of Alec d'Urberville?  In the queue for the toilets?
  

U A Fanthorpe ends her brilliant poem about the stone circles at Stanton Drew with the following lines:

Stand inside the circle. Put
Your hand on stone. Listen
To the past's long pulse.

And I'm tempted to say, how can you get a feel of a place when you can't touch it?  And yet ... there they were, crowds of people wandering; chatting in at least a dozen different languages; listening, rapt, to their audio guides and, less attentively, to their teachers; and posing for countless photos.  Everyone, it seemed, wanted proof that they'd been there, and surely they wouldn't if they had no sense of the exceptional nature of this place.

And me?  Well, I was totally beguiled, even though I've been there more than a few times.  It doesn't seem to matter how much you are herded and monitored, Stonehenge still works its magic.  Standing before those stones in their varying configurations is like jemmying open the door to the past and realising that you are standing on the edge of a precipice.  Whooooaaaa!  What's this about then?