Lugodoc's Recollection of
Stonehenge 2000

Open Access
in
The Twentyfirst Century

On the night of June 20th, AD 2000, Stonehenge was at last opened to the public for the Summer solstice. Druids, wiccans, assorted pagans, travellers, old hippies and even some normal people gathered in the weird blue actinic glare of the floodlights kindly supplied by the nearby army base at Larkhill Barracks. Lugodoc (that's me on the left - my robes are under my waterproof) was there with his friends including Daibh Green, Dylan Ap Thuin and IOD, King Arthur and about ten thousand revellers.

About twenty druids walked there from Woodhenge, across fields and along tracks, led by George Firsoff of PADRAS. I was a little late with my own small group of friends, and in the darkness we actually got lost, ending up in the middle of Larkhill Army Barracks. I suffered the possibly unique humiliation of having to approach a pissed-up squaddy in a chip-shop whilst dressed in full druid drag, and ask for the way to Stonehenge. He was very helpful.

Stonehenge dawn

Nobody knew how it was going to go. Even after fifteen years there were still a lot of people with very hard feelings after the violence of The Battle Of The Beanfield, and scores to settle against the police, and the possibility of it all kicking off was very real. Many of the organisers on the druid side (including me) suspected that the authorities wanted a fight to start, so that they could justify closing it for another couple of decades.

The Drum Core

The public were allowed in at ten o'clock and after passing through a police corridor entered the area under a staff arch held aloft by King Arthur and Rollo Maughling. Although some set up small camps on the grass outside the stones, most headed straight for the circle. Soon the centre of the stones was densely packed with drummers, didgeridoo players, pipers and other musicians, so much so that it was difficult to move elbows. They struck up a powerful hypnotic beat and kept it going all night, from the hour they were allowed into the stones until the following day when police cleared the area at noon. Outside of that intense percussive core the human density gradually diminished as the psychic gravity became weaker, and within the remains of the outer ditch and bank movement was quite easy.

psychic gravity

An hour before dawn The King's Drummers began a slow processional march around the stones, returning to the Hele Stone in time for the sunrise.

Lugodoc's old Peace Steward badge

There was police security. There was private security paid for by English Heritage. There were Peace Stewards organised by George Firsoff of The Stonehenge Peace Process (including Daibh Green and myself - that's my old badge on the left). It poured down with rain nearly all night. In the morning the sun didn't even rise because the sky was completely overcast. But it was peaceful and it was a success, and it was a great way to start the 21st century.

Photo by Tom Pilston

This picture was taken at Stonehenge in 2000 by Tom Pilston, and just about sums it up.

All other photos on this page (unless credited) are by Lugodoc.

Greting the dawn

Greeting the dawn

The soaking wet throng

The Insular Order Of Druids held a dawn ritual just outside the stones. There were many druid orders and pagan groups doing the same thing that morning, but only ours got onto a front page (The Independent) because as we were conducting our ritual a naked man ran out of the crowd and stood in the middle of our circle. He was nothing to do with us and he was only there for a few seconds, but it was long enough for a press photographer to get a picture of his bum. And bums sell papers.

And this, gentle reader, is that picture.

The main fear of English Heritage, the police and the government was that after the sun rose, nobody would go home, and the event would turn into one of the huge, anarchic free festivals of the seventies. This did not happen, possibly the result of the vile weather, and by noon the huge crowd had good-naturedly gone home.

Epilogue

One thing did strike me as curious. The druids made their ritual circles outside the stones on the grassy area because the centre was densely packed with musicians. That day on the midday national news a television report showed a druid circle performing a ritual, but claimed that they had been in the centre of Stonehenge. The brief clip was framed so tightly that you could not see that the druids were not inside Stonehenge at all, but on the grass just outside. The news report then showed a brief clip of the drummers, which I recognised as being some of the people at the very centre of Stonehenge all night, but claimed that they were ravers who had set themselves up several miles away at another event in competition with Stonehenge. Once again, the clip was very short and framed too tightly to reveal that these drummers were, in fact, right in the centre of the stones.

It is not often that this author actually experiences the events he later sees on the news, and this time they just got it completely and strangely wrong.

Since 2000

The following pictures were all taken by this author (except where otherwise credited).

2001 Stonhenge

Stonehenge 2001

Stonehenge 2002 2002 Stonhenge

In 2003 I spent the solstice at Avebury for a change.

Lugodoc at Stonehenge 2004

Since 2000 Stonehenge has been open to the public at every Summer solstice, and this author has noticed a few changes over the last five years. Lugodoc has noticed less druids, pagans and travellers each year, and more ordinary public. In 2004 I only saw two other druids in robes (George Firsoff and King Arthur) out of about thirty thousand people, and not many other robed pagans.

Some neo-druids lament this fact, but I think its OK. Stonehenge now inhabits the normal, secular mainstream British (and even international) consciousness as The Place To Be at the Summer Solstice. And it still gets better every year.

In 2005 I was lucky enough to hang out briefly with a timelord (the same one that met Verity Lambert in 1962 and gave her the idea for Dr Who).

Lugodoc at Stonehenge 2005 B.C. 2005 Foamhenge

Meanwhile, four thousand years later in the twentyfirst century...

Daibh at Stonehenge 2006

Stonehenge 2007

Stonehenge 2008

Police surveillance drone
(photo taken by this author)

2009

The police presence at Stonehenge had been getting less intrusive every year since 2000 and was truly minimal in 2008, but that all changed in 2009. It seems that the new Chief Constable of Wiltshire, Mr Brian Moore, was unhappy about the trouble-free celebrations of previous years and had decided that in 2009 he wanted more arrests in order to "send a message", so this year there were hundreds of police with horses, sniffer dogs and even a remote piloted aerial surveillance drone.

Midsummer Eve fell on a Saturday night for the first time since 2003 (when this author was at Avebury) and consequently the stones were heaving. An estimated 35,000 revellers arrived in three continuous streams from North, East and South between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m. and the crowd was the densest this author remembers. About 31,000 were there last year prompting 12 arrests for minor offences, mainly drugs. This year there were 37 arrests and the costs of the police operation have not been made public.

After all that Chief Constable Moore never actually said what the message was, but it sounded like "I have been given money to burn".

Brian Moore
(publicity photo)

Stonehenge 2009

Since 2000 this author has been at Stonehenge nine times and only witnessed one actual sunrise (the blissful 2005), and this year was typical. The horizon was obscured by low clouds and the sun did not begin to peep through them until an hour after dawn. This perennial lack of an actual sunrise has caused Lugodoc to ponder on one of the many the mysteries of Stonehenge. The five trilithons and the Hele stone are definitely alligned with the Midsummer sunrise, but because of the mechanics of astronomy they are therefore also just as precisely alligned with the Midwinter sunset, thus raising the question - were the stones errected for use at Midsummer, Midwinter, or both?

Unless the Midsummer weather on Salisbury Plain has deteriorated in five thousand years (and it probably hasn't) then I don't think people congregated there to watch the sun rise because it doesn't! 9 times out of 10 you see nothing! I don't know what the Midwinter sunset looks like most years because Lugodoc has never been at the stones for Midwinter because it's too bloody cold.

The latest archeological excavations made in 2008 and 2009 around Stonehenge and Durrington suggest it was constructed for funerary purposes, and most cultures perform funerary rituals at Midwinter for metaphysical reasons, so Lugodoc is now leaning towards the Midwinter hypothesis. But I'm still going there at Midsummer when its bearable.

Stonehenge 2010

Yet again not a perfect sunrise like 2005, but the sun rose above low cloud only a few minutes late and then the day was glorious. Those first rays were captured by professional photographer Duncan Knifton, a friend of Lugodoc on his first pilgrimmage to the stones. He works from The Mobile Portrait Studio (019 8352 8573 - Gunville Road, Newport, Isle of Wight, PO30 5LB)

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Lugodoc's Recollection of Stonehenge 2000

Lugodoc's Recollection of
Stonehenge 2000