Rock of ages... families recreate Stonehenge memories (but now they can’t touch stones!)
STONEHENGE has seen a great deal of history – about 5,000 years of it.
But one small fraction of that time – the mere century since it was put into the nation’s care – is being celebrated with a series of linked photographs.
Visitors to Stonehenge are being encouraged to return to the ancient monument to recreate the photographs taken decades before. Among those to have already provided photographs is American Taney Roniger who was three when she visited the site with her parents in 1971.
She and her father – then a US army doctor stationed in Europe – were photographed by her mother. Almost 50 years later she once again posed in the same spot, with her husband wearing the same woolly jumper as her father had done.
Mrs Roniger said: ‘The original is one of my favourite photographs, I really treasure it. Returning to Stonehenge after all those years was really special. The stones were overwhelming, I had the sense that they were bigger even than my first visit, and it felt like my parents were with me.’
However, the image can’t be a precise copy. Visitors are now not normally allowed among the stones, let alone to lean on them.
The site – believed to date back some 5,000 years – was gifted to the nation by, local landowners the Chubb family, on October 26, 1918, and it is now in the care of English Heritage. The organisation’s Kate Davies said: ‘We want people to help us create a photo album with a difference. Each and every person who has visited Stonehenge is part of its story.’
The ‘then and now’ photos will feature in a celebratory digital album. Contributors are asked to share their experience by logging on to www.stonehenge100.co.uk