Tea at Trianon: Durrington Walls

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Durrington Walls

From Atlas Obscura:

Stonehenge is notorious for its scale, with its trilithons (the Jenga-block constructions of two upright stones with a large stone lying flat across the top) clocking in at over 20 feet, and a total site diameter of nearly 100 feet. The newly found pits—20 have been found so far, and there are likely more—are about two miles from Stonehenge, near the town of Durrington, and are about 16 feet deep. The pits form an arc with a diameter of over a mile, with a gap on its western side—like a giant crescent moon partially encircling the site of Durrington Walls, another “superhenge” enclosure. It brings to mind a giant eye, with Durrington Walls, itself 1,600 feet across, as the pupil. The complex is just a couple of miles from Stonehenge.

It’s clear that across Salisbury and beyond, such sites were an inescapable part of Neolithic life. They were used by people across the island, likely for ritual purposes (though Durrington Walls also hosted a village at some point). The Wilsford Shaft, a 90-foot hole just southwest of Stonehenge and excavated in the mid-1960s, turned up a number of ancient objects at the bottom. Gaffney’s team found bone and struck flint at the bottom of the holes near Durrington. (Read more.)