This weekend..

It is time to leave the Sanctuary, I've gone about as far as anyone can go who hasn't got access to papers hidden behind paywalls.

The first time I visited this site...
A blazing hot day...
Everywhere except the M40 in the early hours, is hot in motorbike clothing.
Or the Sanctuary at Midsummer...
But this day in April, heat haze blurring the hills.

*

12:22pm -> 12:44pm

24th April 2011

The Sanctuary -Latitude: 51.410002N Longitude: 1.83173W 

Cut grass, concrete-blue-rectangles, concrete-red-cylinders, a thousand black flies -big bodied, their legs trailing behind them. Lark and passenger plane. Dandelions yellow and fluffy. Temperature 18 degrees C (guess) the wind cold. A descriptive plaque. Walkers enter the circle through the ancient entrance, a man doing yoga. Then a family, woman wearing a long purple skirt. The walkers (a group of five women) three go on to read the plaque, two remain in the center of the circles. One of the walkers rearranges the assembly of ‘offerings’: a lump of chalk, a pine cone and a feather. The pine cone is left on a red post, the walkers walk on. In the distance behind me dogs are barking. Behind me the jelly mould of Silbury Hill is gauzy in mist, West Kennet is hidden. The ground here is heavy, like walking through mud. The atmosphere is of emptiness, like a bus shelter late at night and the night bus already gone. The sound of cars, regular, never quite fades away. Bird song almost absent only the lark. Us clad in motorbike wear, helmets with us as we eat sandwiches, insulated by leather; capture devices at hand -Vado, camera, pens and paper, the light filters down through a blanket of cloud.

The Sanctuary is a disc cut into a hill, its presence heralded by the barrows at the top of the road climb to Avebury.

No ghosts are interested in us, no sense of being watched, or psychic discomfort. Just stronger gravity.

Over the road -strewn with dead and injured black flies hit by speeding cars- is the Ridgeway. A camper van and a few other cars.

Gavin shows me a pill-bug, rolled up in his hand.

The grave; I don’t think people know where it is. The Sanctuary plaque does not say. The plans of The Sanctuary that I find online don’t help. But the most likely answer is the buried stone by one of the blue-concrete rectangles.

People don’t stay here. The yoga guy stayed the longest but he too has stalked away from the rings.

*

Back home.

After spending hours looking at the plans, reading everything I can find..

We return to the Sanctuary

Several times.

I am always unprepared for the confusion of those damn posts!

So, I decide to lay out the internal structure with...

Well, first time with string.

A green book is not a good idea

I almost lose my scissors...

Due to emotional crises I've chopped off all my hair and feel a total prune

I'm useless with a compass too.

Anyway, having proved to myself that I can get some idea of where the posts used to be with the string marker, we come back at midsummer....except it is that year (two years ago now?) when it was raining all the time. I chose a weekend close to the solstice when rain was delayed rather than ongoing...and I expected the sun to line up with the paths of string.

So I lined up the string in the freezing wind, on the freezing grass with numb fingers...

And the sun?

Proved to my own satisfaction that the sun does not rise and shine down the NE pathway as seen from the center. Which of course begs the question, did the sun appear to shine down it...ever, and...how do I know that these concrete posts are accurate anyway!

Let alone, perhaps the sun was never meant to be seen that way.

Should I be looking from elsewhere...

And what about shadows!?

So I'm sitting by one of the barrows off the Ridgeway, eating Palma Violets (really, shouldn't I have been better prepared?!) making notes, and we see a hare looking at us!

Quite made up for the cold and sense that I wasn't asking the right questions some how...

2 hours latter

Back in Marlborough, and into The Castle and Ball for an excellent breakfast.

Next I wanted to check the position of the concrete posts. My theory being if the posts were positioned in the 1930s, then they would be aligned to north and south of that time - and there has been a change of 13 degrees since then in magnetic declination...

But without knowing when the concrete markers were positioned...I am none the wiser.

The department who takes care of such monuments, couldn't find any records relating to the concrete posts.

Somewhat disheartened  I gave up on accuracy and approach the Sanctuary as a relic.

I assume it is an older, Neolithic structure which was reconfigured both in structure and meaning by the Bronze Age, and that the original sense of gravity I felt there is interesting...the Sanctuary is now a palimpsest and a field of ghosts. 

Light sticks are next...

To recreate the ghosts of the paths...

I pour a cthonic libation to the burial...

Then mark the paths.

But.

Not enough light sticks!

So I buy more sticks...and design an easy way to work out where the paths should be - using the Cunnington's plan and measurements 

I come back at midwinter, when Venus is bright enough to be captured by my camera.

The light sticks show that there was quite a lot of space inside the Sanctuary...

So...

What is next?

Well, there is still my shadow theory which is...

The central post gives the position of G1 (a north post)

Sun rise at midsummer creates a shadow that shows where G 5 aqnd G6 should go.

Sunset at midsummer creates a shadow from G1 and central posts for G 2 and G 3.

But really...
The only way to test that is to be there.

I don't have any great hopes for the weather.
Nevertheless, a room is booked for overnight and I'm looking forwards to visiting the Polly tea rooms...

And will this really be the end of our relationship?
I honestly don't know!