code and effect

Bassist Abby Travis

Searching for Megameet on Flickr I got 1060 results, mainly to do with shiny cars and people running. I’d argue we have a stronger claim on the word. This year’s Mega(lithic)Meet went really well, the weather more or less held for us to meet at Avebury’s Cove and in addition to those well met last year, there were a few more faces to put to usernames.

That morning we’d arrived in Avebury hoping to locate those few stones that showed areas of tool polishing from before they were dragged to their current location. We found two examples, one from reading and the other by examination. Before long however we were being shown an even older aspect of the circle’s history - one of our party was a geologist, and guided us to a stone within the monument that displayed evidence of its formation, an area of petrified wood clearly visible in the upright sarsen.

Taking advantage of the weather a clutch (or is that a scatter?) of us headed off up the Herepath to seek out a circle previously unseen by most of us but known to our guide Moth. More accurately the remnants of a Bell Barrow known as Penning or Avebury Down Stone Circle.

We had brought a copy of Pollard and Reynolds’ book Avebury, Biography of a Landscape to help us locate the polisher marked stones, and the cover of the book shows a map of the area as drawn by the Reverend A.C. Smith in 1844, which has many areas marked as ‘Penning’ (The Pennings, Penning, Waydens Penning) which I assume goes some way to explaining this barrow’s modern name. Sadly its location isn’t on the cover.

Overall a day of discoveries, renewed friendship and new acquaintance which ought to be repeated more often.

This is my design for this year’s ‘Megameet’, an informal gathering of people with themodernantiquarian.com in common. It’s been a while since I designed anything for print, and given a little over a week to realise it I ought not to complain about the outcome. Somewhere between those old Railway posters of sunny England and a Clarice Cliffe pot.

The image is oil on cardboard, with some colour adjustments (the sky was originally signal red!), taken into Illustrator for the typography, which uses the ‘Pete-Boy Vikings’ font, seriously but sympathetically cut up for my own use.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7476829.stm

Tesco shareholders have not backed proposals to improve welfare standards for chickens championed by TV cook Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

The chef wanted investors to adopt new standards for rearing birds, but the plan got fewer than 10% of votes at its annual general meeting in Solihull.

Hugh’s Speech is available here at Chickenout.tv.

I’d never envisaged I’d be bigging-up a Tory MP, but the reason he’s doing this after this serious and terrible mistake is bloody good to see:

Shadow home secretary David Davis has resigned as an MP.

He is to force a by-election in his Haltemprice and Howden constituency which he will fight on the issue of the new 42-day terror detention limit.

update: 4 hours later, the Party machine has rolled on. The top news item at conservatives.com reads “Dominic Grieve appointed Shadow Home Secretary” (Yawn).

Interestingly their site became quite flakey when the story broke, impying they’re not used to much traffic - is it any wonder.

Foul weather, stages shut down, but marvellous. The Acoustic Festival of Britain (photos from Sunday).

Ed Tudor-Pole. He likes Black Jacks.

Ade Payne

Jethro Tull

Silbury update 32

Blogged too soon, English Heritage Silbury Update 32 has now been released.

Imminent completion had me wondering yesterday about what would happen when all filling was complete, today my wondering’s over but my fears remain.

All repair works to summit, tunnels and sides are now complete, the sides repairs will be seeded and Skanska have begun to clear up the Hill by removing the entrance way they installed.

A fence has been erected (photo figure 2) around the summit infill area, so that it can be ‘allowed to completely dry out safely’.

I’m impressed that the Hill has been repaired. There were times its future didn’t look good at all, and even the recent updates reported new surface voids and collapse problems.

Given the weather so far this year and the wet forecast for Summer, I almost wish that they were keeping a small presence there until the next few months show the site to be truly safe and sound.

history / prehistory » Silbury Hill Repairs »
post #101  April 29th, 2008

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Silbury, a summary

It has been a while since I’ve read the updates on Silbury, let alone post about them.

Update 27 reports the seasonal shutdown in December/January, and three surface collapses, each up to 1.5m deep. The accompanying photograph is wonderfully captioned ‘ Hill side collapse features’. Archaeological recording will take place prior to backfilling.

Update 28 reports on more bad weather, resultant collapses and tunnel blocking. The ditch flooded (as sight I have yet to enjoy) so the monorail had to be relocated. Skanska and EH are confident that settlement from the Hill void may now be complete.

Update 29 charts backfilling continuance dogged by collapses ‘in the outer sections of the Atkinson tunnel’ related to January’s weather. Backfilling of East/West lateral tunnels completed 8th February 2008. The central Atkinson tunnel is now also filled, as have the Silbury 1 excavated areas: ‘have been filled with a combination of crushed chalk installed by hand and chalk paste which does not include any lime or other materials, thus providing an ncontaminated environment with the aim of ensuring the long term preservation of the central organic material’, good to know. The rest of this update examines the process of backfill into the ‘new’ tunnel, with photographs.

Update 30 reports on void fill completion and removal of Atkinson’s concrete portal (off to the museum with you!) . The entrance is carefully filled with a ‘large bank of chalk’ and then the void behind filled with paste. The total tonnage of chalk used to fill the tunnels is reported in this update, and the confidence that ‘all of the known voids have been infilled as well as practically possible to do with material of the same composition as the original hill construction’. The summit void fill begins (photos).

Update 31 is the latest, and reports on near completion of the summit void, with ‘crushed chalk…hauled to the top of the hill using the monorail’ as the final layer over the pumped chalk. Hill side works have begun - Figures 2 and 3 show a ‘3t 360 excavator’ removing the stacks following the creation of a’stable slope’ to facilitate it, and a dumper bringing chalk up for the infill. Stripping the side of the Hill to create this slope puts the odd evening trespasser into perspective on this SSSI, but I suppose it has to be done somehow. Archaeological recording of the surface craters has taken place.

That’s where we stand. The number of reported collapses during the backfill are a little worrying, but now there’s nowhere for collapsed material to go, and the unstable sections filled from above we can only hope that as her overhaul nears completion she’s now capable of shrugging off any weather the rest of the year may bring.

English Heritage updates on Silbury Hill

history / prehistory » Silbury Hill Repairs »
post #100  April 28th, 2008

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French security officials have been forced to cut short the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay following anti-Chinese protests along the route.

news.bbc.co.uk: Protestors cut short Olympic Relay