Squaring the Circle at Stonehenge
June 1, 2008 - 1:55 am
In 1620, Inigo Jones studied Stonehenge and he eventually came to the conclusion that it was a Roman temple.
One of the reasons he came to this conclusion was because he believed or inferred that there had once been a sixth trilithon, so he filled in the missing bits that the original builders had thoughtlessly left out; the end result was a nice circle that turned out to be very useful indeed when it came to proving his theory.
I’ve already written that he doesn’t seem to have been completely mistaken in thinking Stonehenge was Roman, but I’ve partly gone into this in a preceding post.
We are absolutely certain (I think) that there was never a sixth trilithon at Stonehenge, at least not one in sarsen and not in the place that Inigo described.
All things considered, it’s fair to say we’re not completely sure of the design of the first bluestone monument at Stonehenge, although for reasons I’ve given in the preceding post and comment, I’m inclined to think that the illustration on the English Heritage site is more accurate than not.
However, I can’t help noting more than a passing similarity between Inigo’s seventeenth century method when it came to proving a theory about Stonehenge and the way a stone circle’s miraculously and very conveniently appeared in the Timewatch trailer.
If anyone thinks that it’s unfair to accuse the BBC, in this specific instance, of craftily ‘doing an Inigo’, please feel free to submit as long and as detailed a comment as you like; I’ll publish it, I’ll read it with the utmost care and if I’m remotely persuaded, I’ll very happily say as much, because I wouldn’t want to persist in a delusion and I’m always happy to be corrected.
On this particular occasion, though, I’m not going to hold my breath.
Care to comment?
