Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

If I recall correctly, when the total exclusion zone was first lifted EH only wanted pagans to be allowed in but King Arthur said that he would not enter until ALL were allowed in.

Idle curiosity but I've asked this before and never had an answer.......Does anyone know or are there any accounts as to, in what way(how)was the solstice etc celebrated here prior to Alexander Keiller's renovation work or did people(various worshippers) "reclaim the site" after the stones were re-erected? When the stones were lying awry surely they wouldn't have "aligned" with the sun, the moon and Harry etc...maybe nobody knows...which is fair enough...but usually there is a mine of info gleaned from other posters.

Does anyone know or are there any accounts as to, in what way(how)was the solstice etc celebrated here prior to Alexander Keiller's renovation work or did people(various worshippers) "reclaim the site" after the stones were re-erected?

Interesting question Mr R.

There probably were small numbers of people who went to Avebury prior to Keiller’s restorations, and went there for what we might now call ‘pagan’ reasons (ditto Stonehenge etc) but the mind-set must surely have been very different then compared to the good elements of present day attendees at such places (let alone the bad ones!). Not sure when large numbers of ‘revellers’ started going to Stonehenge, but in the 60s I can’t recall large numbers at Avebury at any time of the year (as a student just down the road at Swindon, Avebury, Silbury WKLB were places we often went to and they were always very, very quiet).

The focus was all different wasn’t it: Mods and Rockers had gone, the Beatnik age was drawing to a close and the Hippie age was dawning – maybe that’s when things started changing, with an accompanying increase in travel not only within national borders but internationally as well. There was a lot more serious thought around back then and a desire to learn about things new – you can see it in the music, poetry etc of the time; that’s something you don’t see so much of at solstice gatherings today, as Nigel has rightly pointed out above.

Still, returning to your original question: might be worthwhile trawling through the Swindon Advertiser for happenings at Avebury up to the middle of the last century – would make for an interesting study. There was another Swindon newspaper that only flourished for a few years in the 60s called the Swindon Gazette (or it might have been the Swindon Chronicle) which had a slightly more ‘liberal’ approach to reporting :-)

Interesting question Mr R.

There probably were small numbers of people who went to Avebury prior to Keiller’s restorations, and went there for what we might now call ‘pagan’ reasons (ditto Stonehenge etc) but the mind-set must surely have been very different then compared to the good elements of present day attendees at such places (let alone the bad ones!). Not sure when large numbers of ‘revellers’ started going to Stonehenge, but in the 60s I can’t recall large numbers at Avebury at any time of the year (as a student just down the road at Swindon, Avebury, Silbury WKLB were places we often went to and they were always very, very quiet).

The focus was all different wasn’t it: Mods and Rockers had gone, the Beatnik age was drawing to a close and the Hippie age was dawning – maybe that’s when things started changing, with an accompanying increase in travel not only within national borders but internationally as well. There was a lot more serious thought around back then and a desire to learn about things new – you can see it in the music, poetry etc of the time; that’s something you don’t see so much of at solstice gatherings today, as Nigel has rightly pointed out above.

Still, returning to your original question: might be worthwhile trawling through the Swindon Advertiser for happenings at Avebury up to the middle of the last century – would make for an interesting study. There was another Swindon newspaper that only flourished for a few years in the 60s called the Swindon Gazette (or it might have been the Swindon Chronicle) which had a slightly more ‘liberal’ approach to reporting :-)

Is it so bad to allow people to briefly take control of stonehenge at the solstice, especially as no lasting damage is done?
Ok litter is dropped, stones are climbed and a hell of a lot of people have a really good time, Stonehenge can handle it for a day. The celebrations are hardly a free-for-all, heavy marshalling and policing esuring that everyone has a safe time and the site does not suffer anything other than superficial damage.
The stones have witnessed destruction, rebuilding using heavy machinery, military manouvres, free festivals, police riot and all manner of abuses, the big old stones have not only survived but have thrived.
Perhaps giving people a focus for their solstice partying takes the pressure away from many of our more vunerable sites and allows a lot of people to joyfully engage with the past on their own terms.
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