Stuart Jeffries is right to say that plenty happened at Stonehenge over the past century that we might now wish had not (Stonehenge: regifting really doesn’t get any better than this, 29 October). The idea that it has been remodelled as archaeologists “thought it ought to look”, however, is a myth, oddly perpetrated on obscure Russian blogs.
If, as Jeffries suggests, you compare today’s monument with Constable’s 1835 watercolour, you’ll see not “astonishing differences in [the remains’] alignments” but an almost exact match. John Ruskin, who argued that all restoration is a lie (“And, today, so is Stonehenge,” says Jeffries), should be happy with the way the site looks: nothing has been added or taken away.
Frequent calls for restoring megaliths were dismissed both by Stonehenge’s private owners and by their state successors. Many stones are, as Jeffries says, set in concrete, but in most cases this was done in the belief that inaction would have led to stones falling (not just damaging the monument but also risking visitors’ lives).
When the Office of Works accepted the gift of Stonehenge from Mary and Cecil Chubb in 1918, several of the largest stones were leaning and supported by wooden poles. These were indeed straightened – which is why they now appear as they do in Constable’s drawings.
The position of three stones has changed since 1835. A trilithon (two uprights and a lintel) fell in 1797, and was on the ground when Constable saw it. It was re-erected in 1958, along with another upright and lintel which fell in 1900.
Stone 56, as Jefferies says, was straightened from a lean in 1901. But apart from that one (admittedly prominent) megalith, Stonehenge today looks as close to how it did before 1797 as can be proven.
Mike Pitts
Editor, British Archaeology
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