Stonehenge Solved Its Three Observatories, Who built them, How and Why

A recapitulation of the overall situation concerning sub-standard stations is as follows.

106. mast bollard missing from hole; beam missing, spar 106 absent
108. beam short and skewed: hoist-assisted spar 108 is absent; mast bollard missing. Circle bollards not required.
110. anchor stone 35B introduced to ensure hoist line passed over the runner, but with the consequence the ranging movement of the spar was limited. Only one mast bollard needed.
111. beam skewed anticlockwise. Potential chafing of hoist line avoided.
112. beam skewed clockwise. Potential chafing of hoist line avoided.
121. beam raised but not successfully positioned, spar 121 is absent. Two circle bollards erected but not needed; mast bollard hole dug but stone not placed in it.
122. aka beam123 fell down, spar 122 absent. One mast and two circle bollards erected, but surplus to requirements.
123. entrance spacer prepared but not erected: converted to beam 122. No circle bollards were required by the design,
124. beam erected but fell on being commissioned: spar 124 absent. One mast bollard was erected and then extracted from its hole; but circle bollards were left standing.
125. beam not raised for reasons unknown, hence spar 125 is absent. The fourth mast bollard not erected: two left for the adjacent 126; no circle bollards required.
128. beam and its unassisted spar heavily skewed anticlockwise.

From the foregoing it can be seen that of 19 designed mast bollards only 13, possibly 14, were erected. Of 56 designed circle bollards, only 44 were needed, with a possible 6 left standing but unused.

Summarising, the aim-design requirements were:

30 stations, comprised of:
      2 entrances
15 hoist assisted spars
13 unassisted spars

Of these :
the secondary entrance was without a spacer
six hoist assisted spars were absent
all unassisted spars were operable, with 128 skewed anticlockwise

The last days of the Harassed team's tour would have been busy ones. All construction equipment would have been cleared out of the installation through its entrances, much of this being bulky. This observation prompts consideration of a process employed throughout construction but which has gone unremarked so far. It concerns the means by which long, slender stones were vertically lowered into near-snugly fitting holes, and when necessary, extracted just as cleanly. The physical necessity for this close fitting stems from all such stones being loaded, or stressed, horizontally. Under such circumstances, the backfill of a large hole would soon fail. The sizes of such stones range from the smallest, the circle bollards, through the lever guide posts, to the largest, these being the pommel and shackle frame legs subsequently employed as bollards at mast 156. The largest pair of these were each 60cm (2ft) square in section, 4m (13ft) long and weighed (4 tonnes) when so used. They were in holes about 1.5m (5ft) deep.

Rigging the installation involved dealing with the consequences of the faulty work of the Learner and Innovatory teams. At mast 152 they correctly dug the four holes ready to receive its mast bollards, but in the event found that the two central ones were superfluous, Figs 53, 54. It is supposed this was because spar 106 was not operable, probably because on commissioning its beam fell; it is absent today, although its supporting fellows are present. Additionally, they discovered station 108 had been sacrificed by the Innovatory team when dealing with the consequences of the offending upright 07. At mast 154 only one spar, 111, was fully operational, with110 having limited effectiveness.

Whether or not any earlier team had rope, the Harassed team obviously had, in order to rig the spars, but the strength of this would have been totally inadequate in the process of moving huge stones from horizontal to vertical with precise positioning. While the means of raising beams and bearers are clear, those for the uprights are not, and no attempt to address them is made here. However, it must be that the method employed, like the others, was founded on the exploitation of tree stems up to a massive size, already shown to be available.

The bulky equipment must have been removed immediately upon the mast bollards being erected, to leave clear for the riggers, the space at the centre of the installation. In any event they would not have appreciated interruptions. Unnecessary work was avoided: the bolster (the so-called Altar Stone) used for raising the mast 156 bearer, was left in place; the holes of the lever guide posts were not backfilled; the heel stone at the arch was left leaning. It is probable the inevitably large quantity of waste timber and stone chips were left on the ground because these would have mitigated the slipperiness of the exposed chalk, especially when it was wet.

As tidying up proceeded, the team would have been training their hosts in preparing rope, lubricating the runners, rigging and resetting stations, and in the use of ladders. The organisation of shift working would have been thought about. Most importantly they would have been trained accurately to sight the Moon's notional centre, both skywards and just above the horizon, by day and by night. Some discussion must have taken place about recording changes in the Moon's paths and how this could be described and reported. The agreement about conveying reports via Carnac would have been rehearsed.

A key question at this juncture is how effective the installation may have been given its shortcomings. Demonstrably this was low, perhaps in the order of 30%. It was most disadvantaged in cloudy conditions. With clear skies, the low elevation, non-assisted spars, would have covered most of the Moon's paths, but be subject to mist at the horizon.

When the team left the site it looked bedraggled. A westbound visitor prematurely leaving way SU 0340-1 to approach it from the southeast, in the direction of mast 154, would have first sighted it over the irregular crown of a verdant bank. Below this was an even more irregular verdant ditch, but his attention would riveted on the top of a pinky-grey edifice from which spars pointed skywards reminiscent of the masts of O2 aka The Millennium Dome, at Greenwich, London. On crossing the bank he would have traversed a flat area of down trodden grass, regularly punctuated by holes, to stand before orderly looking alternating stones and gaps. Through many of these protruded smooth spars, but all of them revealed a seeming cat's cradle of ropes. To his right many large pieces of partly worked timber were strewn about accompanied by a large recumbent stone. Beyond this was another, broken and leaning.

A different vista was apparent if he approached the installation from the northwest towards mast 160. Here the bank was piled up, gleaming white chalk, some of which had tumbled into the verdant ditch below. The ground beyond it was variously chalk, earth and trampled grass, over most of which was strewn not only partly worked timbers, but also many pieces of stone, large and small. Like the other side, this area was also punctuated by many holes. To his left he would have noted the stones furthest from him had the orderliness he had previously seen, as had more stones on his right. But most of those between them stood seemingly aimlessly, in front of towering, commanding, capped ones. The ground around all these was churned up chalk, as was that to be seen at the centre through the gaps. Much of this was covered by chips of wood, stone, flint, and animal bones. There were only a few people about, and they were outside the stone circle, under shelters supported by poles, resting and tending to hanks of rope, while others cooked on fires nearby.