Saturday, September 22, 2007

The motors and the constant traffic

....the sense of solitary grandeur which arose as one came slowly up across the wide deserted plain to stand alone beneath the huge trilithons, is a thing of the past. The military camps, the motors and the constant traffic along the dusty road, the wire enclosure, necessary as one must acknowledge it to be, and above all, the offensive pay-shed, so placed as to spoil and vulgarise the approach by its natural avenues, have robbed the temple of all its old romance.

J P Williams-Freeman

4 comments:

Littlestone said...

Thanks to Gerald Ponting for this. Gerald comments, "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!"

Anonymous said...

Hi JP Williams-Freeman was my Great Grandfather. I just wondered were yo got this from? It is really interesting.

Thanks

Littlestone said...

Hi. Thank you for your query.

The only other information I have on your Great Grandfather is that supplied by Gerald Ponting which reads, "[Footnote](The pay-shed) could surely have been put a quarter of a mile away near the junction of the roads. Surely, too, it has collected enough shillings to pay for setting up the shaky stones in concrete, and doing away with those hideous timber props."

"- 'Introduction to Field Archaeology as illustrated by Hampshire' by J P Williams-Freeman 1915."

I've asked Gerald if he knows anything else so please keep checking back to see if anything more has been added.

Littlestone said...

Just received this from Gerald - hope it helps.

"Very interested to hear from Williams-Freeman's descendant! Littlestone gives the title of the book from which I spotted this quotation. I had to search it out through the Hampshire inter-library lending service. My interest stems from the fact that when Heywood Sumner's interest started to change from various forms of art to field archaeology, he was advised by Williams-Freeman. Between the two of them, they surveyed most of the ancient earthworks in Hampshire and Dorset and some adjacent counties - and I'm hoping to get around and visit a lot of them, to photograph them as they are today.

Gerald Ponting"