Unhenged

[callmemadam]

Adam Nicolson writes lyrically in today’s Telegraph about Stonehenge and its problems. His solution is a radical one: to drive a 2.8 mile tunnel under the whole site, at a cost of £1,070 million. My solution is even more radical, at once populist and elitist. It is to pull down the horrible visitor centre, remove the car-park and make access as difficult as possible except on foot. Then I would look after the monument but stop promoting it as something for people to go and look at. In the immortal words of Adrian Mole, ‘Went to see Rob Roy’s grave. Saw it. Came back.’ What is the point? I think it perfectly reasonable that people should be able to see it from the road, thinking either, ‘OMG, WTF is that?’ or ‘Stonehenge already, I’m in good time’. Because we have lives, too, just as those now buried round about once did.

Remember ‘Seahenge’? I would have taken photographs of it from all angles, measured it so that a reproduction could be made and then let the sea take it back. Likewise, the Mary Rose would have stayed in her watery grave and all other wrecks, whether ships or planes and especially if they contained bodies, would rest on the sea bed suffering a sea-change. All mummies, bogmen, peatmen, icemen would stay in the quiet earth, not be exhumed and examined and exhibited to satisfy the morbid curiosity of the masses and the vanity of the professionals who extrapolate such fantastic theories from their discovery.

When you walk in the City of London you have 2,000 years of history under your feet but you don’t have to see it.
W H Auden wrote these wonderful lines:
‘Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.’
The past is ‘altogether elsewhere’ as much as a place may be. It is enough to know that it is there.

Comments

[sloopjonb.livejournal.com]

I agree with your solution to the Stonehenge problem (although that wouldn't keep the bleedin' Druids out), but I think your desire to let all sleeping ruins lie a little extreme. The remains of the past are concrete (literally, if Roman) reminders of the past; the past is not a different country; it is contiguous to the present, it informs the present, and we have a duty to remember, in the hope that we may learn. Pictures are all very well, but real things can inspire wonder, and imagination, and understanding. You don't have to see it, you say; and I say, to see the real thing is for me always an experience of several orders of magnitude greater than seeing a mere reproduction of it.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

to see the real thing is for me always an experience of several orders of magnitude
Yes, and to touch. But you are seeing through layers of knowledge and experience, both your own and other people's. I will never forget visiting Fountains Abbey on a foggy day. I 'knew' all about the Reformation but had never before had such a feeling of the 'bare ruined choirs'. The problem with this sort of feeling for the past is that it is best experienced alone. In our part of the world, go up to Badbury Rings or Maiden Castle and imagine the Romans are coming to get you. Up north, stand on the wall and imagine you're a legionary and the Picts are coming to get you. I wouldn't be sure how much of this was me and how much Kipling. I would still prefer to leave things be and let people get what they can from them. Naturally, I exclude books and artefacts but the landscape will inevitably change, in layers, as in London.

[sloopjonb.livejournal.com]

You can't preserve everything, and you shouldn't try, but even minimalist cutting the grass maintenance (not to mention keeping vandals at bay) costs money, and that inevitably means charging money, and, at least to some degree, promoting the site as an attraction. On the whole, I think English Heritage do a good job of it, and so long as at least one visitor on a school trip has their imagination fired by it, it was worthwhile.

And I didn't think about the Reformation at Tintern Abbey; it was a cardinal (pun) point of the history course at my school that the Reformation never happened.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

it was a cardinal (pun) point of the history course at my school that the Reformation never happened.
What? Was it an RC school, or did you just not 'do' the sixteenth century?

[sloopjonb.livejournal.com]

Very RC school. Named after a Cardinal who was anathematized as a traitor by Elizabeth I*. The whole Henry VIII business was regarded as a regrettable mistake, now in the process of being rectified. Please retain your seats: normal Universal Church service will be resumed as soon as possible. In the meantime, here is some music. You got a very different perspective on English history in RC schools in those days (I daresay it's all different now, what with the National Curriculum and all). None of your Bloody Mary and Good Queen Bess for us!

* and by any objective standard, actually was a traitor. Can you imagine the Wiliam Joyce Memorial School, or Kim Philby College? No, but Cardinal Langley, who performed very similar activities, was only a step or two below beatification. Go figure.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

> Kim Philby College

I'm now imagining this very hard indeed.

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

I think there is definitely a case for leaving things be but still offering an interpretation to make them live for people today. We visited Battle when the children were very young and they spent 2 absorbed hours listening to those handset things and they were rivetted. Nothing was dug up, or on display - it was basically just a field, but the commentary brought it to life. I like the way history comes to life unexpectedly - not necessarily at the big famous sites but the inscription on a grave in a country churchyard, the writing on an old document, or looking at a landscape unchanged by the centuries. The more Visitors' Centre an attraction becomes the more the feeling of history is lost for me.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

The more Visitors' Centre an attraction becomes the more the feeling of history is lost for me.
I so agree, and with what you say about gravestones and so on. A sudden glimpse into the past that comes from nowhere. I had this once visiting a local house which was open for Dorset Heritage Week. The terribly nice owner showed a small group of us around in person and she suddenly produced a little apron, eighteenth century, in the most vivid colours. For me, the pinny conjured up a whole domestic life.
cybersofa has pointed out that my scheme only works for intelligent people. To which I replied, 'I did say it was an elitist solution'.
The trouble with commentaries is that they vary so much in quality. If I were to visit war graves in France, for instance, I would not need to be told what I should think about it. This is why I can't bear the journalist Fergal Keane: instead of reporting, he tells you how you should feel.

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

I am sure you are right re: the commentary thing - I remember the Battle one because we were surprised at its success with our very young children - they had a choice of narrators allowing the comparison of different PoV.

I had a pinny moment when my mother, researching our family tree, produced an 18th C signature from an ancestor who was the maid of honour at a wedding on a parish record.