Woodhenge | Stonehengeology

30. And this is the result - Woodhenge - one of the keys to unlock Stonehenge

Above Is the result of the Jenks survey and there's none more accurate. So, if you think that professor Alexander Thom got it right, think again!

Maud Cunnington completely stripped Woodhenge when she excavated the site in 1926 through to 1928, when she noticed that some extra posts were added to its six egg-shapes and concluded that they formed a corridor through which the summer solstice sun could pass. The next picture shows what that corridor looks like.

36. The picture on the right says...

Survey was made with a tape having a stretch of 0.6% (to 0.5 at 50 feet). Hence the megalithic fathom would have measured 5.44 divided by 1.006 or 5.41 feet.

Hence 5.41 feet is the unit used in setting out this diagram. It is thus applicable to the survey plotted with no stretch correction.

Also note his pencilled correction of ?0.4% when AT wonders if 0.4% might be better than 0.6% (My italics)

The picture on the left says:

Tape stretch 0.6% on 100 feet, 0.5% on 50 feet. Note: The plot is of the raw material, therefore, any measurements taken from the plot must be increased by 0.6% or as shown above.

As you can see, AT complained that he had measured Woodhenge with a ‘stretchy tape’. He claims to have estimated exactly how much was needed to be deducted from his measurements to put things right. This is a distinct lie because he was known to use steel tape. "A very careful survey, using a steel tape and theodolite, was made of the concrete posts which the excavators placed in the post-holes in the chalk." Megalithic Sites In Britain. A Thom, Oxford University Press, 1967.

Furthermore, AT's concrete datum post remains on-site to this day, and living in Oxford, at the time, meant that a short trip to Woodhenge was easily possible when very few measurements were needed to put matters right.

So, Professor Thom deliberately distorted his plan of Woodhenge by making an undersize plan of it.

His plan of the outer egg (Thom himself called Woodhenge an egg) is proven by CAD to be 12.6 inches undersize (0.32 Metres).

And If all this wasn’t bad enough, he skewed the solstice 'round a bit' to make it look as if its six eggs were aligned on the sun, when they are not.

Professor Thom, highly skilled engineer, with an Oxford University Department of Engineering named after him, was not capable of such obvious mistakes, but clearly had some reason for abandoning his cherished Megalithic Yard.

The images shown above are taken from Alexander Thom's notebook which was gratefully provided by Edinburgh Museum. The museum also provided me with Thom's original co-ordinates, which when plotted on computer, gave a plot of Woodhenge that was upside down.

Professor Thom was a good guy until he came to Wiltshire and met some archaeologists. This would have been in the 1960's.

Thom started off, like so many of us, by becoming fascinated by our Stone Age monuments and their purpose. Living in Dunlop, Scotland, in his formative years, AT, a keen and qualified engineer, set out to prove that Scotland's many stone circles, flatted circles, and egg-shapes, were all measured out using one common standard of measurement. This standard of measure, he called - The Megalithic Yard.

Thom's 'Yard' came under much criticism from the establishment and was told - despite having surveyed some 400 of the things - to go away and find further proof by measuring even more of them!

Well he did, he went for the Biggy - Avebury. Not that it did him much good.

However, Thom did use Avebury's great size to refine his megalithic yard to 32.664 inches (0.83) metres. Lucky for us!