Report
22nd September 2000
The 55 timbers of Seahenge from Holme-Next-The-Sea in Norfolk still lie in tanks
of water on the fens of Flag Fen near Peterborough and the arguments continue . . .
Officials at Flag Fen after one year now say they have completed their
investigation and want to release the timbers and send them back to Norfolk. The
Rural Life Museum at Gressenhall is to accept Seahenge for a two to five year programme of
preservation work before returning it to West Norfolk, if a venue can be found and an
authority to take responsibility. Readers may be interested to read Francis
Pryor's statements of last August on the
Flag Fen pages.
There is, as yet, no report available from the work done at Flag Fen and it is still not
clear what preservation technique, if any, will be used.
Owner of Seahenge, the le Strange Estate who agreed to the excavation, does not
wish to retain ownership and has approached the West Norfolk Borough Council as the most
likely authority to take control, but the Councillors are reluctant to do so and consider
that responsibility should be undertaken by the county council's Museums and
Archaeological Service. Particularly in view of it's role in the original
excavation.
The Norfolk Museums and Archaeological Service and English Heritage, both of
whom were involved in the decision to excavate the monument, have said they would like to
see the timbers returned to the County but only after the funding and responsibility have
been resolved.
Holme Parish Council Chairman Geoff Needham has said that formation of a
Charitable Trust with responsibility for Seahenge has been discussed but he says, "No
one, as yet, wants to join such a Trust."
Meantime, Mervyn Lambert, the local businessman who temporarily halted the
removal of the central root because of flouting of Health & Safety Regulations (see Root Removed), has come forward with an offer which he says is
being seriously considered. Mr. Lambert is prepared to put up £10,000 for the
Seahenge timbers to be returned to Holme and completely buried in clay on the beach where,
he says, they will be preserved as indeed they had been for the last 4000 years.
At a meeting of the Holme Timber Circle Forum (formed last year - see
previous page). Druid Buster Nolan, a member of
the Forum, put forward Mervyn Lambert's proposal and this is now believed to be under
serious consideration.
Local feeling is that Seahenge on Holme beach was magical with an unexplainable
mystique felt by many. The excavation destroyed this magic. What is left is a
pile of old timbers. |
