Update July 2024
I have looked again at the position of the marker for Station Stone 94 and I think I was wrong, it appears to be very close the stonehole. I went back to Cleal's plan and over laid the Station Stone excavation plan onto a whole site plan and put a dot on the stone hole. Then overlaid this on to an aerial photo and the dot is on top of the marker. So it looks like the marker is in the right place.
Original Post - May 2016
The parchmark of the stonehole is visible in Sharpe's aerial photograph, and can be made out in the more recent one by Adam Stanford:
One of them is: "Stonehenge Station-Stone rectangle and the relevant sightlines and horizons: Most southerly moonrise/ most northerly moonset and Midsummer sunrise/ midwinter sunset".
The four station stone positions are in a rectangle that on its longest edge just grazes the sarsen circle and seems to be aligned to astronomical features as above.
Station stone 94 has recently been marked with a handsome polished sarsen stone in a stainless steel ring.
From the public path the sight line to the fallen Station stone 91 should be very close to the sarsen circle. On a visit this week trying to align the marker left a large gap. My hat indicates a closer position which seemed to match the plan and photos.
Click any picture to enlarge.
It would be nice if someone with more time and the right equipment could check if the marker position is correct or not.
See also: http://www.sarsen.org/2015/12/the-position-of-stone-hole-97.html
Hi Tim,
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't be the first time they positioned a marker incorrectly.
I seem to recall the bronze Solstice Arrow had to be repositioned after installation. (fwiw, it still looks funny to me ...)
They went to all the trouble to make those beautiful markers - it seems to me that they'd take the extra minute and re-calibrate the GPS reader! (Or perhaps simply cast an eye from SS-91 across S-1 and -2? )
Neil
Tim , Your hat looks about right .The conversion was mostly wrong in the northing (about 7m )
ReplyDeleteThe grid ref converts to 50 .907965 , -1.400683 .They had 50.908028 -1.400675
Geo - I was just editing it as in cutting and pasting I had managed to get my eastings and northings the wrong way round - I think I have it right now.
DeleteThis gross error reminds me of the engineer's plan when they wanted to put a marker for Stone-97's hole inboard of the Heelstone!
ReplyDeleteSo yet again the independent researchers are more accurate than middle-management ticket counters.
I guess you have to care about these things, but seriously - how difficult would it be to do it correctly?
Neil
About 18 months the english rock art site ERA and some of ADS had taken correct grid refs but kept them in in the OSGB datum and not changed to WGS84 when converted to Co-ordinates .Resulting in a fair bit of confusion .
ReplyDeleteDo you know if this ever got corrected?
ReplyDeleteNo it hasn't been
DeleteThanks for the analysis Tim. I think you had it right the first time. By plotting Atkinson's 1978 survey data on Google Earth, aligning with stones 91, 92, and 93, the hole for stone 94 should be just 12-16 inches off the current path at coordinates 51.179223, -1.826367. This placement would make the entire Station Stone rectangle quite irregular, with the distance between stones 91-92 being nearly 1.5 meters longer than that between 93-94, as Atkinson’s data suggests. However, I suspect that whoever marked the location for stone 94—the last hole discovered—couldn’t accept this irregularity and opted to place it where they believed a more regular, quadrilateral rectangle 'should have' stood, rather than where it actually was.
ReplyDelete