To people like Troll I say get real. For info this is my track record as as somebody who gives their time freely. I will spell it out to Venutius I am not trying to deter people from helping the Thornborough campaign. A "victory" at Thornborough will make little difference to Dorchester now but a defeat will affect Dorchester and many other sites for decades to come.
First I am a planning aid volunteer - I believe I am the only archaeologists who is - I have done one project for them in the last six months. Why is this the case?
Second I have just done a job for free to help a charity project build houses for the homeless in reading.
Three I have given evidence at Public Inquiry to successfully stop an industrial estate being built on top of a Roman Villa in a conservation area.
Four there is campaignette to stop my own village doubling in size. The local protestors, Streatley Housing Action Group, dont want to pay me even though they will pay a barrister and other expert witnesses. I have however managed to reduce the size of the development to about 24 houses and stop a key field being built upon.
Five there is the objection I raised about Dorchester for the hearing in public. This is posted on Britarch and I think friends of Thornborough bulletin board. I was far more successful than PAGE, who were a bit of a front for the local Tory Party, by using arguments that would be understood by master planners rather than doing illegal fieldwork.
Six there is the time I spent campaigning as a County Council Candidate last May and on behalf of my wife who was also a district council candidate etc.
I admit it was a bit of light year for me on the volunteer front but then in my defence I will say in the last 12 months I have been in hospital for a week, my mother died and both my wife and myself have had health issues.
I can claim a little bit of knowledge about Thornborough as my PhD was on Thwing another class 2A henge in Yorkshire.
It is simply not possible to be involved in everything and earn a living. The Thornborough Henges deserve well qualified people with the time and resources to challenge the planning application and scrutinise what NYCC are going. English Heritage are paying consultants to do just that so why duplicate the effort.
My letter of objection to Dorchester can be read on Britarch
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadm...10878&I=-3
See also
http://www.dsl.iofm.net/PAGE.htm
There another 193 hits for Parishes against gravel extraction.
The point about using superlative or a hierarchy of importance is a simple one. You may save the "best sites" but not the mere Nationally Important ones. The notion that Thornborough is more important that the Dorchester one or vice versa is not meaningful or helpful.
There is a principal in minerals planning that the least environmentally important area will be quarried first. At this stage only scheduled monuments are considered. Please read my previous post on Dorchester. So under the current system we could end up debating which one is to go Thronborugh, Cana Barn or Dorchester? As I put in my letter of objection about Dorchester.
"I would identify a difficulty in county based planning - if a
particular type of monument is concentrated in a particular county it
may seem to be more common from a local perspective than it actually
is nationally. When dealing with archaeological sites of national
importance a national perspective must be taken. The hinterland of
the Thornborough henges is currently subject to a similar structure
plan proposal.
Thus, co-incidentally, the nature of structure planning is such that
it is possible that only one example of one of the rarest types of
monument with its landscape and hinterland will survive in the UK
within a ten year period"
Similarly
"There are circa 70 henges known in the UK. A henge is circular
monument of unknown function of late Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age
date with a bank, usually internal to a ditch, with one or more
entrances. They are assumed to be religious monuments. They occur in
concentrations rather than as isolated monuments. There is one type
known as type IIA ? because it has two entrances and two banks. There
are 7, perhaps 8, examples in the UK which are:
Thornborough North, Middle and South (Yorkshire)
Cana Barn and Thornborough (Yorkshire)
Dorchester Big Rings. (Oxfordshire)
Thwing (was considered to be a class 2A henge but on excavation
proved to be more complex and a class 2 henge with a later outer
ditch added when the monument was fortified) (Yorkshire).
Of these all survive except the Dorchester Big Rings, although Thwing
has been partially destroyed by ploughing and archaeological
excavation.
These monuments are to be compared and contrasted with the circle
henges (a henge with a stone circle within it) of Stonehenge and
Avebury (Wilts). A similar amount of labour was used to construct
them. There are two other examples which are of a comparable size -
Marden (Dorset) and Durrington Walls (Wilts).
The hinterland contains many monuments which are nationally important
in their own right, often due to the Rarity, such as mortuary
enclosures, cursuses and causewayed camps.
It is apparent to me, having studied these most enigmatic monuments,
that the only way we are ever going to understand such monuments is
from the study of the main focuses, the henge itself, and the
hinterland."
While I am reasonably confident about Dorchester for now, but what about in 10 years time?
As things stand I see there a lot of heritage issues at the moment which are going largely unnoticed such as:
erosion of gravemarkers
listed buildings which are at risk in the Welsh Borders
as well as master planning and gravel for example.
I choose to spend my time on issues doing things that I know will make a difference and utilises my skills to the best advantage which means doing the following:
giving evidence at hearings
ensuring that politicians I know are properly briefed
Peter
Peter
