Interesting.
The Hidden History of Stonehenge — basically how it was substantially rebuilt and restored from the beginning of the 20th Century to the mid-60s, and how that restoration was then quietly elided over in guidebooks starting in the 70s, leaving the intended impression that what you see is what was there since time immemorial.
A million visitors a year are awe-struck as they look back in time into another age and marvel at the primitive technology and muscle-power which must have been employed transporting the huge monoliths and raising them on Salisbury Plain. They gasp as they are told about this strangely spiritual site…. mankind’s first computer, its standing stones and precise lintels, lining up magically and mysteriously with the heavens above and the solstice suns.
But now, as if to head off a potential great archaeological controversy – and following interest displayed by historical researcher Brian Edwards and a local newspaper, the brochures will be re-written, to include the ‘forgotten years’. The years when teams of navvies sat aboard the greatest cranes in the British Empire to hoist stones upright; drag leaning trilithons into position, replace fallen lintels which once sat atop the huge sarsens. As Mr Edwards – the erstwhile enfant terrible of British archaeology following revelations that nearby Avebury was a total 20s and 30s rebuild by marmalade millionaire Alexander Keiller – says: ‘What we have been looking at is a 20th Century landscape, which is reminiscent of what Stonehenge MIGHT have been like thousands of years ago. It has been created by the heritage industry and is NOT the creation of prehistoric people. What we saw at the Millennium is less than 50 years old.’
Granted, a bit breathless in prose (and one has to worry a bit about info from the “ufos-aliens.co.uk” domain. It does appear to have been originally published in “The Western Daily Press” in 2001, with some associated press at the time, so it’s not quite as goofy as it sounds.
As to the Avebury reference — here’s a bit more info — also interesting, if a bit less breathless (again) than the above.