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Climbing on Standing Stones
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Resonox
604 posts

Re: Climbing on Standing Stones
Mar 01, 2012, 07:11
I still find it hard to accept the disparity between..those deemed suitable candidates to climb on stones and those not.....Standing stones have no doubt been removed and(broken up) and used as building materials for more centuries than we'd care to admit. I'm not agreeing with my next statement BTW..just pointing it out...If a farmer considers that to remove stones use them as building blocks for animal shelter, scratching/gate posts on his property is OK because it is his land and by default the stones are his (and probabl;y there is some legal right??) we can't do anything(legal) about it and are we even justified in trying to do anything about it?
Are listed monuments the property of the farmer ,the government/public or EH despite their location? Can we just wander over fields which lack "right of way" to investigate without permission, bearing in mind we might disturb newly planted crops at best and mothering animalsat worst...and if we have a dog with us (even on a leash), in the case of the latter .can the farmer discharge a firearm? Tell me, I don't know.

We can't do anything about robbed /ploughed out circles, barrows or stones which were "done in" centuries ago hopefully we can do something to prevent any further destruction today...but to claim we can validate climbing on monuments because no-one has taken a picture of the top of it is akin to saying, lets dig into every barrow, tumulus or cairn because no-one has ever taken pictures of the stones inside or digging up standing stones and toppling them over to get pictures of the base. This IMO is the domain of "professionals" whether we agree or not..because they supposedly have the manpower to set them back in situ and "officially" record their findings.
Personally still find it a tricky debate probably because of the moral and legal grey areas caused by years(centuries) of ignorance..but given our awareness today there must be a definitive solution...we need to bang our collective heads together and present a united case for some kind of legislation/code to promote getting this solution in place.
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