The 17th century Nonconformist chapel in Green Street is part of Avebury's material and spiritual history, but I believe age has seniority. For me that puts Neolithic Avebury first in any consideration for historical restoration - a compromise might have been a 'glass floor' or something similar, inserted into the chapel/tourist information centre, highlighting socket holes and anything else which came to light during the restoration: as it is, the original structure here, namely the South Inner Circle, has been basically ignored, apart from a perfunctory 'watching brief' and some archaeological note taking. With regard to the Obelisk - I do not believe that Avebury can function properly without it - it points out the seasons with their attendant ritual: depriving Avebury of its central monolith was a cruel thing to do, and some of the villagers appear to have stubbornly maintained its tradition with maypoles in its erstwhile shadow, which have left traces. I cannot see why a new Obelisk of local sarsen can't be quarried to replace the old one: we have Stukeley's excellent sketches and descriptions to go by; we have the socket hole marked out by Keiller; we have the burning pits dug out beneath the recumbent stone, to destroy it - so we have a lot of data for the reasonably accurate replication of this central standing stone.
Avebury
A Present from the Past
About Me
- Littlestone
- Studied art and design at Swindon School of Art, Wiltshire, England and afterwards Japanese painting and calligraphy at Kyoto University of Fine Arts, Kyoto, Japan. In 1966 I was a lay monk at the Zen Buddhist temple of Ryozen-an in Kyoto and practiced under the guidance of its Director, Ruth Fuller-Sasaki and senior monk Dana R Fraser (co-translator of Layman P'ang: A Ninth Century Zen Classic). Also present at Ryozen-an was the author and poet Gary Snyder. Gary Snyder was one of the first Westerners in Japan to study Zen Buddhism and was the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's book, The Dharma Bums. I was assistant conservator (paintings) at Kyoto National Museum from 1969-1980 and Chief Conservator (Eastern Pictorial Art) at the British Museum from 1980-1986. Japan Foundation Fellow 1973-1974 and Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works since 1985.