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Roof on Stonehenge?
If one looks at how a neolithic round house is built, then posts are placed into pits in the ground and the posts are connected togther in a ring (the ring is called a "wall plate") using a series of beams at about head height (e.g. see http://www.gallica.co.uk/celts/build.htm). It is important to have a strong "wall plate" so that the roof can be supported. When a roof is placed on the structure, the posts tend to bend outwards increasing the radius of the wall plate. This in turn puts each beam in the wall plate under tension. When one considers Stonehenge, it would appear that the lintels form a wall plate via the lintels and the mortice and tenon joints interconnecting them. However, putting stone under tension is not a good idea and would have led to a failure of the structure at some point. Is this the reason why a roof on stonehenge is generally regarded as a stupid idea? I have read various books on Stonehenge and even suggest that the stone structure of Stonehenge replicates that of a round house, but they could never have intended to have put a roof on the structure. However, the authors of these books don't say why.
Does anyone have any others ideas?
Submitted by CGHW1 on Fri, 2008-02-15 03:07.
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Stonhenge Roof?
There are so many problems with the idea of a roof, what happens to the rainwater run-off? Excavation has found no erosive areas in the chalk around the outside nor any cut drainage channels. Why build a central Trilithon array with opposing pairs having tops at different height? If a huge roofed structure was what they wanted it would surely have been done in have been in timber; why block the interior with huge uprights when post would have done? Why dig pits as deep as 8ft to hold stones that weigh up to 45 tons to have them inside a roofed building. It simply doesn’t make sense. Stonehenge is clearly a master work of prehistoric stone architecture that was designed to be open and seen as such, for whatever ‘purpose’. Have a look at the blog on http://sarsen56.wordpress.com/ a lot of old ideas look a bit insecure.
What about like sites such as Avebury?
Aside from the timbers required being very long, how would one explain the other similar sites such as Avebury down the road from Stonehenge?
Length of timbers on roof at Stonehenge
The point about the span needed to be covered between the outer circle and the inner trilithon horseshoe has been discussed before (A. Vayson de Pradenne, Antiquity, Vol 11, pp87-92). He suggested that a distance of about 9 metres (with a pitch of roof at ~40%) would be needed between the two sets of stones. However, there would still be the question of how to get a beam across the open arms of the horseshoe, unless the area within the horseshoe was uncovered.....
Roof
It could have been a lightweight wooden thatch roof on stonehenge.
How long is a timber?
The diameter of the Stonehenge sarsen circle is about 100 feet. Assuming a slope for the roof of about 40º, that would need timbers of about 70 feet in length. I don't think that's feasible with British trees, but I could be wrong.
It has been proposed that Stanton Drew circle had a roof, but it also had many more concentric circles which would allow the use of shorter timbers. http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~lbull/stanton.html
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