PLACES TO VISIT
Revealed in the Landscape RICHARD K. EVANS FRPS
Sarsen stones or grey wethers, so-called for their resemblance to sheep, were deposited by Ice Age glaciers and often placed by prehistoric men in formal religious arrangements. These sandstone erratics lie on the chalk downs near Marlborough in Wiltshire.
Industrial heritage can take its place in a landscape. The Fontinettes hydraulic boat lift, near St Omer in northern France, was built in 1887 to raise and lower 300-ton barges the 43ft between the NeufossÊ canal and the river Aa. It was replaced in 1967 by a single-basin lock, but remains in place as an evocative museum of the canal’s history.
Carved from a natural rock face overlooking the river Danube at Mraconia, Romania, this memorial to the Dacian king Decebalos recalls his successful campaigns against the Roman armies of Emperor Trajan in the 1st century AD. The face measures 130ft from chin to forehead.
The Bronze Age stone circles of Stonehenge dominate the sweeping landscape of Salisbury Plain. Parts of the site date from 2100 BC; it was completed some 900 years later.
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