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Stonehenge Rebuilt

After writing the Pop-up Stonehenge I had this bright idea for a fun children’s event, why not build a huge model of Stonehenge? Much my surprise English Heritage went along with the idea and so, with masses of
help from the Young Archaeologists Club(www.britarch.uk) it went ahead at the Festival of History in August 2005.

 
Building ‘Bluestones’

Over the weekend, over 150 kids built 5 trilithons (the big bits like doorways with two uprights and a horizontal lintel) and 19 bluestones, together with the Altar Stone and the Heel Stone. This was at half the size of the real thing so the biggest trilithon was well over 3m (10ft) high.

The big stones, the sarsens. are built around a pre-fabricated light wood frame which are then covered in big sheets of cardboard. These are given their texture with wood-chip wallpaper, artistically applied to simulate cracks and weathering. The smaller bluestones are free-form cardboard sculptures which, owing to over enthusiastically applied wallpaper paste and paint, invariably collapse. These are painted (blue of course) and decoration of an appropriate style is applied. So, no cars, phones, modern houses etc, just images from a prehistoric world

  
It’s amazing how many kids spontaneously come up with real prehistoric motifs that we find in rock art and on pottery. Everyone has a great time and it tends to get a bit messy. The end result is impressive and ends up with a ceremony at the end with a sunrise and a sunset to show what all the original effort went into. Since then I have done three smaller builds, one for museum education officers at York (grown up were rubbish at it!) a second for the a primary school in Cambridgeshire and a third in May at the National Trust’s Stourhead House in Wiltshire.
bluestone decoration
So, if you would like me to come and build Stonehenge with your school or archaeology club (it all fits in and on the Landrover) then e-mail me for details and costs. It cannot be done outdoors unless you can guarantee perfect weather and no wind. So realistically you need a large open building with a ceiling height of at least 3m in the centre (although it can all be scaled down), a floor that can either be mopped clean or covered with some plastic sheeting, a group of keen kids (or adults) and at least one adult supervisor per 4 kids. The maximum that can be accommodated at any one time is 20.