Silbury Hill Solstice Update

Submitted by Andy B on Saturday, 23 June 2001 Page Views: 1003

English Heritage invited ASLaN to help them keep the Solstice hordes off of Silbury Hill this year. In addition to the four EH volunteers, six ASLaN
people attended, covering the period between the afternoon of the 20th and midday on the 21st.

In the end, about a dozen people ignored our combined warnings and went up anyway (including one couple with a small child who was burbling "don' wanna, mummy" a lot). The next EH archaeologists' visit to the top will, hopefully, see whether or not they did any damage, but no-one fell down the hole [1].

While we were whiling away the pre-dawn hours (and Silbury is just awesome in the pre-dawn light, ground-mist and that weird bulky, totally unnatural silhouette), we were able to get a horse's-mouth update on the conservation situation.

EH have just finished interviewing the contractors who tendered for the
survey job. They've selected one and are tweaking the tender to include good ideas from the others. Survey work will start, hopefully, in a few weeks and is due to conclude by the end of August.

EH have said that they realise that they haven't been telling the Concerned Public as much as we want to hear, part of which is because they don't know at what level to pitch it [2], part of which is because they're under-staffed and trying to get the work done.

As they've said before, come the end of August it remains to be seen what work needs to be done and how to proceed. However, they have assured me that if the work extends into the wet season, they will fit a decent rain cover, guyed down to keep it on if things get windy, and importantly, guttered so that run-off ends up in the moat rather than eroding the sides of the hill.

AndyG
www.ravenfamily.org/andyg
www.cruithni.org

[1] Which, to be honest, was my greatest fear - that a drunken reveller
would have to be lifted out by abseiling fire crews, which would doubtless have necessitated lifting gear being moved to the top of the Hil, doubtless doing much more damage than five years of foot traffic.

[2] "Silbury hill is a big prehistoric mound..." vs. "Neothlithic Silbury's
seismic-tomography survey reports, phase 3" - from a Web point of view I'd start catchy and simple but include links to the detailed material so that we have access to it if we want :)

Contributor Bio for Andy B: Megalithic Portal Founding Editor.

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