Lugodoc's Recollection of
Stonehenge 2000

.
Open Access
in
The Twentyfirst Century


Lugodoc in the rain
On the night of June 20th, AD 2000, Stonehenge was at last opened to the public for the Summer solstice. Druids, wiccans, assorted pagans, travellers, old hippies and even some normal people gathered in the weird blue actinic glare of the floodlights kindly supplied by the nearby army base at Larkhill Barracks. Lugodoc (that's me on the left - my robes are under my waterproof) was there with his friends including Daibh Green, Dylan Ap Thuin and IOD, King Arthur and about ten thousand revellers.


About twenty druids walked there from Woodhenge, across fields and along tracks, led by George Firsoff of PADRAS. I was a little late with my own small group of friends, and in the darkness we actually got lost, ending up in the middle of Larkhill Army Barracks. I suffered the possibly unique humiliation of having to approach a pissed-up squaddy in a chip-shop whilst dressed in full druid drag, and ask for the way to Stonehenge. He was very helpful.


Stonehenge dawnNobody knew how it was going to go. Even after fifteen years there were still a lot of people with very hard feelings after the violence of The Battle Of The Beanfield, and scores to settle against the police, and the possibility of it all kicking off was very real. Many of the organisers on the druid side (including me) suspected that the authorities wanted a fight to start, so that they could justify closing it for another couple of decades.




The Drum CoreThe public were allowed in at ten o'clock and after passing through a police corridor entered the area under a staff arch held aloft by King Arthur and Rollo Maughling. Although some set up small camps on the grass outside the stones, most headed straight for the circle. Soon the centre of the stones was densely packed with drummers, didgeridoo players, pipers and other musicians, so much so that it was difficult to move elbows. They struck up a powerful hypnotic beat and kept it going all night, from the hour they were allowed into the stones until the following day when police cleared the area at noon. Outside of that intense percussive core the human density gradually diminished as the psychic gravity became weaker, and within the remains of the outer ditch and bank movement was quite easy.

psychic gravity Psychic gravity

An hour before dawn The King's Drummers began a slow processional march around the stones, returning to the Hele Stone in time for the sunrise.

Lugodoc's old Peace Steward badge There was police security. There was private security paid for by English Heritage. There were Peace Stewards organised by George Firsoff of The Stonehenge Peace Process (including Daibh Green and myself - that's my old badge on the left). It poured down with rain nearly all night. In the morning the sun didn't even rise because the sky was completely overcast. But it was peaceful and it was a success, and it was a great way to start the 21st century.


Photo by Tom Pilston





This picture was taken at Stonehenge in 2000 by Tom Pilston, and just about sums it up.

All other photos on this page (unless credited) are by Lugodoc.





Greting the dawn   Greeting the dawn

The soaking wet throng   Wet throng  

The Insular Order Of Druids held a dawn ritual just outside the stones. There were many druid orders and pagan groups doing the same thing that morning, but only ours got onto a front page (The Independent) because as we were conducting our ritual a naked man ran out of the crowd and stood in the middle of our circle. He was nothing to do with us and he was only there for a few seconds, but it was long enough for a press photographer to get a picture of his bum. And bums sell papers.

Bum
And this, dear reader, is that picture.



Stonhenge dawn

The main fear of English Heritage, the police and the government was that after the sun rose, nobody would go home, and the event would turn into one of the huge, anarchic free festivals of the seventies. This did not happen, possibly the result of the vile weather, and by noon the huge crowd had good-naturedly gone home.







Epilogue
The Gentlemen of the Press
One thing did strike me as curious. The druids made their ritual circles outside the stones on the grassy area because the centre was densely packed with musicians. That day on the midday national news a television report showed a druid circle performing a ritual, but claimed that they had been in the centre of Stonehenge. The brief clip was framed so tightly that you could not see that the druids were not inside Stonehenge at all, but on the grass just outside. The news report then showed a brief clip of the drummers, which I recognised as being some of the people at the very centre of Stonehenge all night, but claimed that they were ravers who had set themselves up several miles away at another event in competition with Stonehenge. Once again, the clip was very short and framed too tightly to reveal that these drummers were, in fact, right in the centre of the stones.

It is not often that this author actually experiences the events he later sees on the news, and this time they just got it completely and strangely wrong.





Since 2000

The following pictures were all taken by this author.

2001 Stonhenge   Stonehenge 2001


Stonehenge 2002  2002 Stonhenge

In 2003 I spent the solstice at Avebury for a change.


2004 Stonehenge   Lugodoc at Stonehenge 2004


Since 2000 Stonehenge has been open to the public at every Summer solstice, and this author has noticed a few changes over the last five years. Lugodoc has noticed less druids, pagans and travellers each year, and more ordinary public. In 2004 I only saw two other druids in robes (George Firsoff and King Arthur) out of about thirty thousand people, and not many other robed pagans.

Some neo-druids lament this fact, but I think its OK. Stonehenge now inhabits the normal, secular mainstream British (and even international) consciousness as The Place To Be at the Summer Solstice. And it still gets better every year.


In 2005 I was lucky enough to hang out briefly with a timelord (the same one that met Verity Lambert in 1962 and gave her the idea for Dr Who).

Lugodoc at Stonehenge 2005 B.C.    2005 Foamhenge



Meanwhile, four thousand years later in the twentyfirst century...




Stonehenge 2006   Daibh at Stonehenge 2006



   Stonehenge 2007   Stonehenge 2007




2008 Stonehenge    Stonehenge 2008



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