Martyn Barber
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martynjb.bsky.social
Martyn Barber
@martynjb.bsky.social
410 followers 340 following 450 posts
Aerial archaeology, history of archaeology, misc spookery; ex-RCHME, Historic England etc.

Stuff at independent.academia.edu/MartynBarber
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martynjb.bsky.social
When we went, we took the stairs.
A colour photo looking down the rampart of Thetford Castle while standing next to the very shiny steps provided for visitors to climb up and down.
November 26, 2025 at 11:35 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
Love a bargain
A photo of a price label on a bottle of beer. It says 'reduced. Was two pounds and ten pence, not two pounds and nine pence'.
November 21, 2025 at 11:24 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
The villagers barely noticed it...
A colour photo taken among the reconstructed Neolithic houses at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre, with several people in brightly coloured clothing ambling around. In the distance, partly obscured by trees, is the inflatable bouncy Stonehenge.
November 17, 2025 at 9:58 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
The real section tells a slightly different story...
A photo showing a Stonehenge cake after a slice has been made through it, clearly showing the below-ground section to comprise layers of sponge, jam and cream.
November 16, 2025 at 8:08 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
...an article by Crawford that is a tad out of keeping with those other contributions. Essentially Crawford was a little angry with Cambridge dons in general and A. C. Benson in particular. I've found no other mention by Crawford of Benson ever, and this piece never appeared anywhere else. Enjoy.
The first of four images covering the whole of Crawford's article. Part 1 reads as follows: The Writings of Mr. A. C. Benson. Some years ago, when Tariff Reform was a common topic of conversation, a lady who was asked her opinion of it, said “I don’t of course understand it, but I feel very strongly about it.” That story very well describes Mr. A. C. Benson’s attitude towards the world; only his feelings can hardly be called strong. He is a typical don – kindly and well-meaning, full of a kind of sentimental sympathy, but without a spark of real insight or critical power. The don is a child who has never grown up. To him the world of nature and of men is like a fairy kingdom, full of strange beings whom he can not make out. His eyes grow round with wonder at their simplest actions. What, however, is natural and engaging in a child is out of place and even repellent in a grown-up man. It becomes a pathological symptom – a form of arrested development. The tears shed by a little girl over her broken doll are normal and healthy tears; The article continues: but these [tears] which fill the puzzled eyes of Mr. Benson as he regards the mysterious things around him are unnatural. For “men must work and women must weep.” Mr. Benson tells us that he takes more pleasure in writing than in anything else in the world. He thereby lays claim to be considered as a literary artist. In one of his essays – The Thread of Gold, page 63 – he says: “It is impossible not to feel, when one is brought into contact with an artistic temperament, that the basis of it is a kind of hardness, a fanaticism of spirit.” That is very true and very well put, but does one find any “hardiness or fanaticism” in Mr. Benson, as revealed in his writing? I trow not. On the contrary one finds there a certain flabbiness and lack of purpose which seems inseparable from the academic character. Literature is one of the greatest among the arts, but good writing need not be good literature and it is not always good art; good writing is meaningless if it is not rooted in reality. Mr. Benson’s essays have no roots; they are like the cowslip-balls of children, an ingenious exercise in stringing words melodiously together. The game may give pleasure to the player, just as there is a kind of pleasure to be derived from constructing Latin Verse. But it is a silly game. The books of an author should be like a lens through which we look at the world, or like the colour-screen which cuts out the haze in a landscape and casts a clear image on the plate. The writings of Mr. Benson are a mirror in which we see only the pale reflection of his won rather bloodless emotions. Continues: Mr. Benson is a great overgrown baby peering at a callous world through his college window. But he lacks the healthy savagery and red blood of youth. It is significant that the one solitary essay in “The Thread of Gold” in which he touches the discoveries of modern science should refer to an extinct reptile of gigantic proportions. Like all children he is attracted by strange beasts. And that is all that the head of a Cambridge college can find in science. Ye Gods! Can he indeed be deaf to the multitudinous tramp of Darwin’s mighty army, and to the rhythmical blows of Huxley’s oratory breaking on the muddy sands of orthodoxy? Can it be that all that is vital in modern thought eludes him and his like? The article concludes: Unfortunately one knows from personal experience that it does, and that of all those dons and tutors only a very few have any idea of what is being said and done in the busy world outside. It has been said that the mind of a British Philistine is impervious to ideas; if that is so, then Mr. Benson and his fellow dons are typical Philistines for whom there is but little hope. A whisper will arouse a sleeping dog, but not all the shouting in the world can disturb the peaceful slumber of a jelly-fish.
November 11, 2025 at 1:54 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Whale in any of his surviving notes or correspondence. Shortly before WW1 ended, some of the inmates at Holzminden managed to print what would be the only ever issue of "The Occasional Review". Among the contributions, which were mainly rooted in camp life and associated matters, was...
A photo of the front cover of 'The Occasional Review". There is considerable wear and tear to the edges of the cover, which is a lightish brown in colour. At the top, in black letters, is the title. Towards the bottom, in a small font, is says Number 1 and 28th August 1918. This copy is in the British Library.
November 11, 2025 at 1:54 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Haven't posted much about OGS Crawford for a while, so here's something from Crawford's WW1 days. He saw out the war as a PoW in Holzminden alongside the likes of James Whale, director of two of my all-time favourites "Bride of Frankenstein" and "The Old Dark House". Sadly, OGSC never mentioned...
A photo of a black and white photo of Crawford in uniform, taken during the First World war while on leave at the Berkshire home of his aunts. The photo is in the Crawford Collection of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University. Mounted on brown card, a hand-written note says "on leave from France".
November 11, 2025 at 1:54 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Been scanning old slides again - this is 1998. No idea who that leg belongs to - maybe they're still there?
A scan of a colour slide image showing part of one of the underground galleries at the Neolithic flint mine site of Gtime's Graves, Norfolk. Metal posts can be seen supporting the chalk roof. Just above centre, a little distance into the galery, is a large flint nodule. To the right, mosltly out of shout, is someone crouching in the gallery - their right leg and right arm can be seen in the top right corner of the photo - black shoe, blue jeans and some sort of stripey affair on top. No idea who it is/was, but almost certainly someone alive rather than a Neolithic spook.
November 10, 2025 at 9:21 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Interest has perked up in this again, so... here's an extract from the Wiltshire Times' report on the auction, published 25 Sept 1915 - the purchaser was Mrs Chubb, not Mr...:
Extract from the Wiltshire TImes, 25th September 1915, stating that Stonehenge, when the bidding readed £6,600, was [quote] "knocked down to Mrs. C.H.E. Chubb, the wife of a popular local landowner. There was much applause when the name of the purchaser was announced..." [end quote]
October 29, 2025 at 1:59 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Is it time to do a top ten modern myths* about Stonehenge? Saw a lot of this yesterday. Cecil Chubb did not go to the auction to buy chairs (or curtains) for his wife, who had a name - Mary; and the money used to buy Stonehenge was hers.

[*by 'modern myths', I of course mean utter b*ll*cks]
Screenshot of a post on Blue Sky. Username has been obscured by me. Text is as follows - On this day in history, Baronet Cecil Chubb gifts Stonehenge to the British people in 1918. He had bought it as a gift for his wife when she sent him to buy dining room chairs. She reacted about how you'd expect when your husband brings home a bunch of rocks instead of the thing you sent him to get.
October 27, 2025 at 11:33 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
For #HillfortsWedesday this week, a double helping of #HillfortsFromMilesAway - here you can see both Liddington Castle and Barbury Castle from the Roman site at Groundwell Ridge, Swindon. Yes you can. See if you can spot them without having to check the zoomed-in images first.
A colour view looking roughly southeast across the Groundwell Ridge Roman site - seen here as an expanse of grass sloping down away from the camera - across the rooftops of Swindon. In the distance, the horizon is actually the edge of the chalk downs, on which can be seen, if you know where to look, the Iron Age hillforts of Liddington Castle (centre-left in the far distance) and Barbury Castle (centre-right in the far distance). A colour photo showing an extremely zoomed-in image of the earthworks of Liddington Castle taken from Groundwell Ridge. On the left, in the middle distance, is a block of flats. Roughly central, and a bit hazy, are the earthworks of Liddington Castle. Another extreme zoom from Groundwell Ridge, this time with the slightly hazy earthworks of Barbury Castle in the far distance and just above centre.
October 22, 2025 at 1:04 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
A couple of Avebury snapshots for #StandingStoneSunday.
A view across the interior of Avebury, with cottages in the foreground (white walls with gery tiled roof), standing stones behind them in the middle distance, and in the far distance the Bronze Age round barrows on the slope of Windmill Hill. A view looking along the ditch and outer bank of Avebury, with trees on the edge of the inner side of the ditch, on the right hand side of the photo. Ditch, bank and interior are entirely grassed, except for the brief glimpse of white on the top of the bank, extreme left, where visitor erosion has worn a footpath. Despite being posted for standing stone sunday, there is not a stone to be seen.
October 19, 2025 at 10:28 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
I appear to be under observation.
A squirrel relaxing on top of the wooden garden fence, staring intently at me.
October 14, 2025 at 11:28 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
Here are the timelines from 1951. They didn't feature in earlier editions.
The first two timelines from the 1951 edition. The first, on the left, covers the period from 550,000 BC - the start of the Palaeolithic - to, for some reason, AD 50,000. The second, on the right, takes a closer look at the period from 10,000 BC - the start of the Mesolithic - to AD 2,000. The third timeline from the 1951 edition, taking a closer look at the period from 2,500 BC - the start of the Neolithic - to AD 2,000. On the right are key events and developments in Britain, such as Urn People, La Tene Invasions, and the defeat of the Armada. On the right are mostly European events, such as the fall of the Minoan empire, Attila the Hun, and the discovery of America.
October 5, 2025 at 7:14 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Here's the 1932 and 1952 editions. I've only seen the 1921 original in the British Library - it was issued to the OS archaeology division's honorary correspondents rather than being on general scale, and came with a sample map sheet focused on Marlborough.
Front cover of the booklet entitled "Field Archaeology: some notes for beginners issued by the Ordnance Survey". It was published in the Ordnance Survey Professional Papers series as number 13. The cover is what, I believe, was referred to as buff (referring here to the colour, of course), and contains the tille and publishers details, plus crest. Front cover of the 1952 edition of the Ordnance Survey's "Field Archaeology: Some notes for beginners issued by the Ordnance Survey". It is similar to the 1932 edition, but the crest is smaller, and much of the publishers info is now inside. The colour is also slightl different - a more earthy tone.
October 5, 2025 at 1:32 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
For #StandingStoneSunday, I was going to post one of Clarissa Miles' photos from Stonehenge in 1901. She was the photographer during architect Detmar Blow's operation to straighten Stone 56, and William Gowland's excavations, but instead, here's a passing shepherd and his sheep on the (1/2)
A black and whte photograph showing a shepherd and his dog, in mid-1901, standing in the middle of a trackway that crosses the photo from centre left to bottom right. Scattered around on the grass either side of the track are numerous grazing sheep. THe landscape beyond is open pasture with a couple of plantations of trees on the slightly higher ground in the distance. Clarissa Miles' photos of Detmar Blow and WIlliam Gowland's work at Stonehenge in 1901 were included in both of their reports. Those photos have been republished many times since, often without crediting the photographer. Sets of her photos exist in various archives, including WIltshire Museum, Devizes, and the National Record Office at Kew. In the latter, each print is attached to a copyright declaration form submitted in Clarissa Miles' name.
September 28, 2025 at 9:55 AM
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The Heel Stone at Stonehenge, late August or early September 1881 (plus milestone - London 80, Amesbury2). Photo by JJ Cole, architect to then-owner Sir Edmund Antrobus (3rd baronet) and first published in Cole's "The People's Stonehenge" (privately publ. 1895). #StandingStoneSunday
A black and white photo of the Heel Stone at Stonehenge. The view is from a short distance to the southeast. The stone is leaning slightly to the left (i.e. towards the centre of the photograph). The landscape beyond is largely open grassland. Just behind the stone is the track from Amesbury to Shrewton that later became the A344. Just left of centre is the much smaller milestone. John Jenkins Cole, who took the photograph, was an architect who undertook work for the then owner of Stonehenge, Sir Edmund Antrobus (3rd baronet - there were four successive owners, all called Sir Edmund Antrobus). In the summer of 1881, Cole was asked by Antrobus to examine the condition of the monument in the wake of concerns about the stability of some of the stones. During the course of this survey he took several photographs, including this one. He published several in 1895 in his own booklet 'The People's Stonehenge'. Several have been used on numerous occasions subsequently, often without credit.
September 21, 2025 at 9:01 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
There's some coverage of this in the Office of Works' archives as well (quote from historicengland.org.uk/research/res...)
Extract from the report 'Restoring Stonehenge' (link in next post) about this matter. There was indeed some communication between the Office of Works and the British Museum over this matter in 1913. Lionel Earle, then Permanent Secretary to the Office of Works, wrote to Frederic Kenyon of the British Museum asking for details of Antrobus’ offer, noting in passing that Antrobus clearly has “a strong antipathy to the Office of Works – whether general or to someone in particular we none of us know” (Earle to Kenyon, 20th June 1913:TNA WORK 14/213). Kenyon replied the following day: “The Trustees have never had a definite offer before them with regard to Stonehenge, but they have been asked whether, if an offer was made to them, they would, or could, entertain it. The enquiry came to us through Sir H. Read, who has been acting as intermediary between Sir E. Antrobus and the proposed purchasers, with whom the Trustees have had no direct communication. The Trustees’ answer, after consultation, was that their legal powers would not entitle them to hold such a property as Stonehenge; and there the matter ended as far as they were concerned. It would of course be possible for outside parties to hope that parliament should confer on the Trustees additional powers for this purpose; and if there were no other way of acquiring Stonehenge for the nation, I think the Trustees would assent… I think it was their view (and it certainly is mine) that the… solution would be for Stonehenge to be placed under the administration of your office; and the Trustees would only accept it if they were generally agreed that that was the only way of securing a result which they, like everybody else, regard as desirable, namely the acquisition of Stonehenge for the nation. “It would be a great pity if this result is not attained somehow; but, as you know, Sir E. Antrobus is a very touchy person and a difficult customer to handle” (Kenyon to Earle, 21st June 1913: TNA WORK 14/213)
September 19, 2025 at 12:06 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Another scan of an old photo - Carnac, September 1989. It was pretty dry that summer, wasn't it? The person in the centre, Jo, was a little shorter than me, if that helps with scale. #StandingStoneSunday
A colour photo looking across the rows of standing stones at Carnac. The ground is mostly shades of light brown, either grass or areas where the grass has been worn away by tourists' feet. The stones themselves are mostly a kind of grey-brown in this light. In the distance can be seen trees on slightly higer ground. In the centre of the photo, among the stones, is a single individual dressed mostly in black, acting as a highly unsuitable scale. A drawing-pin hole can be seen in each corner of the photo as a result of it being pinned to a noticeboard sometime in the past.
August 24, 2025 at 8:46 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
For #StandingStoneSunday, a 2017 episode of Miriam's Photo Casebook from Viz. The dilemma here is Debbie's, but let's face it, it could be almost any of us.
#ThePhoneLinesAreNowClosed
#DebbieDoesDolmens
Scan of the first part of Miriam's Photo Problem Casebook from Viz 263, March 27. The introduction says: Debbie's Monolith Dilemma - Day 53. Pretty student nurse Debbie Carter had been going out with hunky mechanic Callum Richards for 8 months. At first they had got on well, but now a nagging disagreement about how the stones of Stonehenge had been transported to their final destination on Salisbury Plain was threatening to drive a wedge between them. The first photo shows Debbie and Callum discussing the issue in bed. Callum says "It's obvious, Debbie. They must have moved them using logs as rollers. That's the only way they could have moved such giant blocks all that distance." Debbie replies "I'm not so sure, Callum." The next photo shows Callum sleeping while Debbie ponders: "I love Callum, but surely it's possible that those stones were moved by other means." The next photo shows Callum and Debbie both asleep, but Debbie is dreaming about Callum's best friend Steve. In Debbie's dream, she and Steve are in bed. Steve says "They could have moved them on a barge along the River Avon, then dragged them the final few hundred yards on some kind of sledge." Debbie replies "Oh yes". The final photo shows Debbie thinking "I thought I loved Callum, but after hearing Steve's theory in my dream, I'm not so sure." Finally, at the bottom, after the words "Continues tomorrow", there is a note about a text vote. Who do you think is right? Callum or Steve? Text Callumrollers or Stevebarge to 80118. Texts cost £18 plus your standard network rate. Please wait until the billpayer has left their phone unattended before casting your vote.
August 17, 2025 at 9:04 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
This very much chimes with Nash's response to Avebury, as recalled by Alexander Keiller in a letter to Nash's biographer Anthony Bertram:
Extract from a letter written by Alexander Keiller to Anthony Bertram, dated 13th June 1951. The extract reads: That afternoon we walked around the Monument – that is to say the entire Complex of megalithic monuments of which Avebury is comprised, and Paul very interested indeed. I spared him much archaeological “shop” but he remained, as he had always been, fascinated by the forms of the megaliths themselves. Apart from the interest which he took, and, I believe, really felt, in what I told him of our conclusions as a result of the years of excavations of which I had been in charge there, on that occasion, I do not think that he had any archaeological, religious – he could hardly have had this since we are ignorant of any ‘religious’ significance of Avebury, - or historical interest in this site.
August 9, 2025 at 11:45 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
Screenshot from the film of Assassin's Creed. Two gents in hooded garb, one side on, the other facing the camera, with a murky cloudy (perhaps moody) sky above. One of them is saying "All that matters is what we leave behind".
July 25, 2025 at 12:00 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Separated at birth?
A photograph of a ginger cat sat on the table close to me with a very passive-aggressive facial expression.
July 25, 2025 at 10:52 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
?
A colour image randomly swiped from a Google Images search for a cheap laugh featuring several horses inside a brightly lit stable.
July 10, 2025 at 10:06 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
Peter Underwood on Margaret Murray. I'm guessing this must have had an impact on her career choices.
Extract of text from Peter Underwood's 1983 book 'No Common Task. The Autobiography of a ghost-hunter', published by Harrap Ltd, London. The quote, from page 193, reads "I remember her as a familiar figure in London, but it was a simple fact that she avoided going out in high winds, as she was so small and slight that she was liable to be blown over."
July 1, 2025 at 5:42 PM