Wednesday 8 November 2023

Led Zeppelin’s missing photograph has been found.

 

The original of the iconic photograph on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV was recently discovered and will soon be on display at the Wiltshire Museum.

Visitors will for the first time be able to clearly see the face that has stared out from millions of albums across the world.


After conservation work an exhibition ‘The Wiltshire Thatcher: A Photographic Journey through Victorian Wessex’ is scheduled to open on Saturday 6th April 2024 and run through until Sunday 1st September 2024

The photograph was spotted in a Victorian album at a public auction by Brian Edwards, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Regional History Centre, UWE Bristol.

The mystery of who the figure was been solved after half a century.

He was a thatcher from Wiltshire, Lot Long (1823 -1893) from Mere.

Led Zeppelin IV

The untitled album, usually known as IV, was released on November 8, 1971, and has sold more than 37 million copies worldwide.

The album was Classic Rock’s Greatest Album of All Time - https://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/steveparker/classicrock.htm and remains Led Zeppelin’s ‘most streamed album today.’ https://musicdatablog.com.ar/en/ranked-albums/led-zeppelin-discography-streaming/

The album’s cover artwork was radically absent of any indication of the musicians or a title but featured the iconic framed image, often been referred to as a painting, which was discovered by Robert Plant in an antique shop near Jimmy Page’s house in Pangbourne, Berkshire.

The framed colour image of an elderly man carrying a large bundle of hazel sticks on his back will be recognised worldwide. 

Closer inspection reveals this framed image was a coloured photograph, the whereabouts of which is now unknown.

The original, which is now in Wiltshire Museum, has tantalising fingerprints from it being copied using coloured inks. 



The discovery

The Victorian photograph was discovered by Brian in an auction catalogue of sale in Dorchester, an album titled ‘Reminiscences of a visit to Shaftesbury. Whitsuntide 1892. A present to Auntie from Ernest.’  Tim Daw was able to attend the auction, verified it was the genuine photo and bought it on behalf of the Museum.

 



Featuring exceptional photographs from Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset, the Victorian photograph album contained over 100 architectural views and street scenes together with a few portraits of rural workers. Most of the photographs are titled and beneath the photograph made famous by Led Zeppelin the photographer has written ‘A Wiltshire Thatcher.

Brian Edwards said: “Led Zeppelin created the soundtrack that has accompanied me since my teenage years, so I really hope the discovery of this Victorian photograph pleases and entertains Robert, Jimmy, and John Paul.” 

A photographer named Ernest

There was no further clue to the photographer’s identity and either side of the turn of the century there were over 300 photographers named Ernest. 

The search was on for a largely unknown Victorian photographer of great talent and skill, probably with extensive training in chemistry.  

A part of a signature matching with writing in the album, suggests the needle in this haystack is Ernest Howard Farmer (1856-1944), the first head of the School of Photography at the then newly renamed Polytechnic Regent Street. Now part of the University of Westminster, Farmer had worked in the same building as the instructor of photography since 1882, when it was then known as the Polytechnic Young Men’s Christian Institute. 

The Wiltshire thatcher

About 50 thatchers were identified through trade directories and the census. In the Southwest of Wiltshire, where the other album photos were taken, only one was of a similar age to the figure in the photograph. 

This was Lot Long (sometimes Longyear), who was born in Mere in 1823 and died in 1893. At the time the photograph was taken, Lot was a widower living in a small cottage on the Shaftesbury Road in Mere. Whilst certain corroboration has not yet been found, family resemblances and circumstantial evidence support this identification.

Note on the exhibition 

David Dawson, Director of Wiltshire Museum, said: “This exhibition will be a celebration of the work of Ernest Farmer, who today is little-known but was a leading figure in the development of photography as an art form. Through the exhibition, we will show how Farmer captured the spirit of people, villages and landscapes of Wiltshire and Dorset that were so much of a contrast to his life in London. It is fascinating to see how this theme of rural and urban contrasts was developed by Led Zeppelin and became the focus for this iconic album cover 70 years later.”

Thursday 2 November 2023

The Stone Circles - A Field Guide - Coming April 2024


 

The Stone Circles

A Field Guide

Colin Richards and Vicki Cummings

Imprint: Yale University Press

The definitive guide to the stone circles of Britain and Ireland

From Stonehenge and the Ring of Brogdar to the Rollright Stones and Avebury, the British and Irish Isles are scattered with the stone circles of our prehistoric ancestors. Although there have been many theories to explain them, to this day there is no consensus about their purpose.

Colin Richards and Vicki Cummings provide a clear and illuminating field guide to 424 key stone circle sites in Britain and Ireland. Organised by region, this handy volume sets out the features of these megalithic monuments, including their landscape position, construction, and physical properties. The authors take stock of cutting-edge research and recent excavations stone circles that were previously lost to time. They present new insights on the chronology, composition, and roles of different circles to transform our understanding the sites.

Beautifully illustrated with photographs, maps, and plans, this is an essential guide to Britain and Ireland’s most mysterious prehistoric monuments.


Hardcover

9780300235982

Published: 23 April 2024

£19.99

Friday 27 October 2023

Mynydd Preseli Lidar

Click Picture to Embiggen 

The drover tracks leading up over the saddle are particularly obvious. 

 Link to explore below. (20-22 DSM works best) 

Thursday 12 October 2023

The Stonehenge Altar Stone was probably not sourced from the Old Red Sandstone of the Anglo-Welsh Basin


The Stonehenge Altar Stone was probably not sourced from the Old Red Sandstone of the Anglo-Welsh Basin: Time to broaden our geographic and stratigraphic horizons?,

Richard E. Bevins, Nick J.G. Pearce, Rob A. Ixer, Duncan Pirrie, Sergio Andò, Stephen Hillier, Peter Turner, Matthew Power,

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 51, 2023, 104215,

ISSN 2352-409X,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104215.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X23003905)

Abstract: Stone 80, the recumbent Altar Stone, is the largest of the Stonehenge foreign “bluestones”, mainly igneous rocks forming the inner Stonehenge circle. The Altar Stone’s anomalous lithology, a sandstone of continental origin, led to the previous suggestion of a provenance from the Old Red Sandstone (ORS) of west Wales, close to where the majority of the bluestones have been sourced (viz. the Mynydd Preseli area in west Wales) some 225 km west of Stonehenge. Building upon earlier investigations we have examined new samples from the Old Red Sandstone (ORS) within the Anglo-Welsh Basin (covering south Wales, the Welsh Borderland, the West Midlands and Somerset) using traditional optical petrography but additionally portable XRF, automated SEM-EDS and Raman Spectroscopic techniques. One of the key characteristics of the Altar Stone is its unusually high Ba content (all except one of 106 analyses have Ba > 1025 ppm), reflecting high modal baryte. Of the 58 ORS samples analysed to date from the Anglo-Welsh Basin, only four show analyses where Ba exceeds 1000 ppm, similar to the lower range of the Altar Stone composition. However, because of their contrasting mineralogies, combined with data collected from new automated SEM-EDS and Raman Spectroscopic analyses these four samples must be discounted as being from the source of the Altar Stone. It now seems ever more likely that the Altar Stone was not derived from the ORS of the Anglo-Welsh Basin, and therefore it is time to broaden our horizons, both geographically and stratigraphically into northern Britain and also to consider continental sandstones of a younger age. There is no doubt that considering the Altar Stone as a ‘bluestone’ has influenced thinking regarding the long-held view to a source in Wales. We therefore propose that the Altar Stone should be ‘de-classified’ as a bluestone, breaking a link to the essentially Mynydd Preseli-derived bluestones.

Keywords: Neolithic; Stonehenge; Altar Stone; Sandstone analysis; Provenancing

Under a Creative Commons license

Monday 25 September 2023

The Altar Stone in close up

Full size photo - https://photos.app.goo.gl/fgJgkqLgdkMhzvyj9


Thought experiment: What if the Altar Stone is a later, say, Roman addition to the monument? Is there anything that proves it isn't? If it was what would we expect it to be like? How could we tell? Where might they have brought it from?

The answer is probably where would we expect to find debitage from it and it seems it was found deeper than we we would expect from such a late introduction to the site.


Saturday 23 September 2023

The Altar Stone - Not welsh, so where is it from?

An important paper on the Stonehenge Altar Stone has just been released:

It probably didn't come from South Wales and surrounding areas.

Its petrographic fingerprint which includes a diagnostic high Barium (Ba) content mostly doesn't match the Old Red Sandstones (ORS) of the area, and the ORS rocks there that also have a high Ba don't match other characteristics. 

The hunt for the source is on.  Suitable areas that also have neolithic sites are the top suspects.


AlexD, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons - Old Red Sandstone is coloured Brown 



The paper: - Open Access.

The Stonehenge Altar Stone was probably not sourced from the Old Red Sandstone of the Anglo-Welsh Basin: Time to broaden our geographic and stratigraphic horizons?

Abstract

Stone 80, the recumbent Altar Stone, is the largest of the Stonehenge foreign “bluestones”, mainly igneous rocks forming the inner Stonehenge circle. The Altar Stone’s anomalous lithology, a sandstone of continental origin, led to the previous suggestion of a provenance from the Old Red Sandstone (ORS) of west Wales, close to where the majority of the bluestones have been sourced (viz. the Mynydd Preseli area in west Wales) some 225 km west of Stonehenge. Building upon earlier investigations we have examined new samples from the Old Red Sandstone (ORS) within the Anglo-Welsh Basin (covering south Wales, the Welsh Borderland, the West Midlands and Somerset) using traditional optical petrography but additionally portable XRF, automated SEM-EDS and Raman Spectroscopic techniques. One of the key characteristics of the Altar Stone is its unusually high Ba content (all except one of 106 analyses have Ba > 1025 ppm), reflecting high modal baryte. Of the 58 ORS samples analysed to date from the Anglo-Welsh Basin, only four show analyses where Ba exceeds 1000 ppm, similar to the lower range of the Altar Stone composition. However, because of their contrasting mineralogies, combined with data collected from new automated SEM-EDS and Raman Spectroscopic analyses these four samples must be discounted as being from the source of the Altar Stone. It now seems ever more likely that the Altar Stone was not derived from the ORS of the Anglo-Welsh Basin, and therefore it is time to broaden our horizons, both geographically and stratigraphically into northern Britain and also to consider continental sandstones of a younger age. There is no doubt that considering the Altar Stone as a ‘bluestone’ has influenced thinking regarding the long-held view to a source in Wales. We therefore propose that the Altar Stone should be ‘de-classified’ as a bluestone, breaking a link to the essentially Mynydd Preseli-derived bluestones.

Richard E. Bevins, Nick J.G. Pearce, Rob A. Ixer, Duncan Pirrie, Sergio Andò, Stephen Hillier, Peter Turner, Matthew Power,

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 51, 2023, 104215,ISSN 2352-409X,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2023.104215

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X23003905)