Читать книгу Crap Days Out - Gareth Rubin - Страница 16

Many thousands of visitors to Stonehenge in Wiltshire go to marvel at prehistory’s answer to the Millennium Dome and its surprising lack of size or inherent interest. Yet, astonishingly, few visitors are aware that in the nearby county of Somerset, Neolithic man built another, equally mysterious monument to disappointing bank holidays and unhappy children.

The Stanton Drew stone circles are a group of big stones so uninteresting that they aren’t even on top of each other. That’s right. A bunch of big stones which don’t even merit the word ‘henge’.

As if in apology for not having tried to balance a few on top of the others like those other guys did in Wiltshire, the Neolithic stone gatherers at Stanton Drew did, at least, offer an extra couple of circles for your visit. So it’s a bit like your plumber saying he hasn’t put in a bathroom as you wanted, but he has set up your DVD player instead and still wants paying.

The larger of the two rings, some 113m in diameter, is called the Great Circle. As if Stanton Drew’s contribution to the putting stuff in circles community wasn’t quite poor enough, not all of the big lumps are even there. According to archaeologists, the Great Circle probably originally consisted of 30 or more stones, of which just 27 survive today, and was surrounded by a ditch, which is now filled in. So at some point, someone came and took away three massive stones. For God’s sake, why?

An attraction that could scarcely be crapper if it was made of wood. Imagine that, eh? Woodhenge.