Everything about Sarsen totally explained
Sarsen stones are stone blocks found in quantity on
Salisbury Plain, the
Marlborough Downs, in
Kent, and in smaller quantities in
Berkshire,
Oxfordshire,
Dorset and
Hampshire. They are the remains of a cap of
tertiary sandstone which once covered much of southern
England. It is a dense, hard rock created from
sand bound by a
silica cement, making it a kind of silicified sandstone.
Natural sarsen boulders created by
glacial and
periglacial effects can be sometimes found scattered on the ground surface, moved by
solifluction; the stone is also present in surviving outcrops of the rock.
Human uses
The builders of
Stonehenge,
Avebury and many other
megalithic monuments in southern England chose to build with sarsen stones.
From the middle ages until the nineteenth century, sarsen megaliths in Europe were a target for destruction by both religious zealots and commercial enterprise. The stones were sometimes toppled, cleared from fields under cultivation, or broken up for reuse. Fire or explosives were sometimes employed to break the stone into pieces of a suitable size for use in construction. Sarsen isn't an ideal building material however;
William Stukeley wrote that Sarsen is "always moist and dewy in winter which proves damp and unwholesome, and rots the furniture". In the case of
Avebury the investors who backed a scheme to recycle the stone were bankrupted when the houses they built proved to be unsaleable and also prone to burning down.
Further Information
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