TIMEMARKS
Ruins
Rose Macaulay, in
her book Pleasure of Ruins, sought to penetrate to the
essence of the matter. She cited among the pleasures to be derived
from ruins a morbid satisfaction in images of decay, as well as the
historical and literary associations of the remains, and of course
less sophisticated pleasures such as looting fragments and
scratching one's initials on the ancient walls. But her sights were
set chiefly on the crumbling remnants of lost civilizations, and
the 'backward-looking dreams' deriving from the 'stunning impact of
world history on its amazed heirs'.
If one sees ruins
merely as heaps of stone, then all ruins are the same. It is our
psychological response which gives them holiness or heroism. But is
there a more deeply felt and compelling need for silence at
Fountains Abbey than at Corfe Castle only because we know that one
was a monastery and the other a fortress, or does the fine tracery
of a Gothic window inspire, of its own accord, more reverence than
a battlemented wall? Are we victims of self-hypnosis even before we
arrive, conditioned by our own expectations? What is certain is
that our reaction to ruins is highly complex.
Literary landscapes
The rich literature
of any tract of country is like an elegant multi-hued tapestry; the
weavers over the centuries have taken as their inspirational
threads the atmosphere, the sights, sounds and colours of the
countryside. In Britain, the immense and unique variety of our
landscape is vividly portrayed in the word pictures – from
the graceful gentle sweeps of Sussex Downland where Hilaire Belloc
roamed to the bleak wild mountains of Scotland, the haunts of Sir
Walter Scott.
We read the words of
Thomas Hardy and we too are experiencing the turbulent pastoral
world of his green Wessex, our green Dorset. The young William
Shakespeare knew the woodlands of Arden; here he discovered the
delicate beauty of the wild flowers, the intricate world of the
animal kingdom and where the deer could be poached with
impunity.
In more recent
times, authors too have observed their local surroundings
–often the scene would be tinged to darker tones by
industrial works. Dylan Thomas knew the tough life in the valleys
of South Wales-, the mining world of D. H. Lawrence was the East
Midlands of Nottinghamshire. And who has read the descriptions of
the Yorkshire moorland by the Brontes and not felt the desolation,
the whipping, damp west wind?
The biographies of
these weavers of words tell of their love of the countryside and
their wanderings into the quiet ways.
Things of time
Timemarks are
reminders of the past in the form of a literary work, a work of
scholarship, a social movement, a notable site, an entire
landscape, or a building, regarded as commemorative the ideas of a
particular period. Cultures from the Stone Age to the
Electronic Age have left timemarks that may be used to chart
the progress of human belief systems. These timemarks tell us
that our ancestors always lived in a world which is
incomprehensible regarding questions about how and why they exist
and what was the beginning of it all, what will its end be, what is
time or space, and how do humans related to other living
things. If we keep our eyes closed and our heads down and
refuse to worry about these whys and wherefores of our existence we
can usually muddle through. Each timemark as an object or an
'-ism' pulls us towards a different island of hope and assurance
like so much flotsam and jetsam. Many of us finally acquiesce and
establish ourselves on the best island of faith we can find. Some
of us try to struggle on, but often glance with envy at those who
have swallowed the carrot of a particular set of
beliefs.
Humankind has, ever
since Homo sapiens began to think, worshipped that which it cannot
understand. As millennia have passed a general understanding has
emerged about the scientific place of humans on planet Earth.
However no civilisation has hoped, in its most optimistic moments,
to comprehend it all. But even those securely ensconced
in their faith's replies to the ultimate questions of existence are
still aware of problems. The answers given to the faithful are
often vague and full of ambiguity. They may even conflict
directly with recent scientific discoveries, and great
psychological stress can be caused to the faithful by this
discrepancy. Yet the need for an answer to the problem of existence
is a strong force in the modern world. We have to feel we
understand our environment, so that we are better prepared
than previous generations to face any threats it may present to
us. This is why the 'things of Time', as the substance of
eternity, are important as windows on the past.
The modern
Cistercian monk Thomas Merton put it this way:
"There is no leaf that is not in Your care. There
is no cry that was not heard by You before it was uttered. There is
no water in the shales that was not hidden there by Your wisdom.
There is no concealed spring that was not concealed by You. There
is no glen for a lone house that was not planned by You for a lone
house. There is no man for that acre of woods that was not made by
You for that acre of woods.
But there is greater comfort in the substance of
silence than in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the
present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of
fire, whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from
being an abyss.
The things of Time are in connivance with
eternity. The shadows serve You. The beasts sing to You before they
pass away. The solid hills shall vanish like a worn-out garment.
All things change, and die and disappear. Questions arrive, assume
their actuality, and also disappear. In this hour I shall cease to
ask them, and silence shall be my answer. The world that Your love
created, that the heat has distorted, and that my mind is always
misinterpreting, shall cease to interfere with our voices."
Ruins
Ruins can serve as
more direct windows into the communities they
represent. Cultural timemarks include the remains of
such famous and spectacular places as Stonehenge and the great
abbeys of Fountains, Rievaulx and Tintern, Lindisfarne Priory and
Corfe Castle, but also the lesser-known sites - the long-abandoned
villages and country churches, intriguing for the myths surrounding
them more than for their architectural importance.
Then there are
perhaps the least explored aspect of ruins, such as the forsaken
splendour of once-magnificent houses such as Minster Lovell Hall,
Cowdray House and Moreton Gorbet Castle. While some have been
reduced to rubble, others are perfect facades - like a film set -
their walls pierced by mullion windows and rising to dramatic
silhouettes of pinnacles and gables. Brian Bailey examines the
historical background of each one and the lives that were lived
there in days of former glory, and subtly evokes the spirit that
now pervades the deserted, silent spaces -the inspiration of
Tennyson, Wordsworth and Turner.
The picturesque,
melancholy beauty of ruined cloisters, roofless medieval halls and
crumbling towers excites the imagination as powerfully today as it
did when the Romantic Movement first flowered in Britain in the
eighteenth century. It was then that ruins began to be appreciated
for their intrinsic beauty and not simply as a convenient source of
building material. As a delight in classical symmetry was replaced
by a longing for the sublime and the soulful, so ivy-covered ruins
came to epitomize the romantic ideal, their dereliction imbuing
them with a poignancy and an air of mystery that buildings can
never have in their complete, inhabited state. The evocative power
of ruins lies in their landscapes and the intricate details of
their adornment by both man and nature
Archaeology
Today, our knowledge
of the ancient world is almost entirely based on the evidence
provided by archaeology. Before the middle of the nineteenth
century, antiquarians based their knowledge of the ancients on
written records, the writings of the early Greek, Roman and Jewish
historians and geographers, and books such as the Bible. Literary
evidence, however, is unreliable, for man often omits to tell the
whole truth for a number of reasons. For example, he may see events
through biased eyes, he may not be a good observer, or he may be
basing his account of events on hearsay evidence, passed on by word
of mouth, which may, in some cases, be hundreds of years old.
Language again is a difficulty, as meanings tend to change with
translation from one language to another. All these faults,
however, did not daunt the early historians who wrote with absolute
conviction.
Chronologies were
calculated and established which were looked upon as infallible
facts. An example of this was the way in which the Old Testament
was regarded as the only accurate account of ancient history,
including its chronology. In 1650, Archbishop Ussher published his
Annals of the Ancient and New Testaments in which he
asserted that the world began in 4004 B.C. Soon after, this date
was not felt to be precise enough, and Dr John Lightfoot, master of
St Catherine's College, Cambridge, made some obtuse and lengthy
calculations, and announced that the world had indeed begun in 4004
B.C., on the 23rd October, at nine o'clock in the morning to be
exact! He published this statement in a book entitled A few and
new observations on the Book of Genesis, the most of them certain,
the rest probable, all harmless, strange and rarely heard of
before, a fitting title! However ridiculous the ideas of the
early antiquaries and theologians, they were accepted at the time,
and by the eighteenth century the date 4004 B.C. had been placed in
the margin notes in the Bible, where it had an air of authority and
therefore truth.
Not all antiquaries
were satisfied with this state of affairs. Some realised that the
situation was far from good and attempted to improve things. Men
like William Stukeley and John Aubrey sought to supplement their
knowledge about ancient monuments with accurate field observation.
John Aubrey, a Wiltshire squire, was the first observer to give a
detailed description of Stonehenge and Avebury. In recognition, his
name has been given to the pits which surround Stonehenge, a
feature he first noted. Another pioneer of field archaeology was a
Welshman by the name of Edward Llwyd, one-time Keeper of the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He travelled widely throughout Britain
publishing the results of his work in a book called Archaeologia
Britannica.
The nineteenth
century saw a change in attitude. By then a number of antiquaries
appreciated the sparsity of their knowledge and began asking
awkward questions, which, at that time, could not be answered. Many
suspected that the antiquity of man was extremely great and began
to focus their attention on the stone implements of the 'pre-Roman
period'. It was obvious to them that this period was very long, and
contained a number of phases, but until some sort of order was
established, the best they could do was to group it all
together.
The way was now
clear for other advanced thought. Soon Sir John Lubbock in his book
Prehistoric Times pioneered the use of the terms
'prehistory' and 'prehistoric'. He also believed that the Stone Age
could be divided into two. This he did and invented the terms
'Palaeolithic' and 'Neolithic' to describe the Old Stone Age and
New Stone Age respectively.
It was becoming
increasingly clear that in order to advance the knowledge of
ancient man, excavations had to be undertaken. The aim was
not simply to fill museum cases with curios, but to provide answers
to many unsolved questions. Excavations of the former kind had been
undertaken for some time in Britain, Europe and the Middle East,
but the philosophy that brought science into archeology was the
need for a more logical and scientific approach by excavating for
information and not for objects. The result is that the
concept of 'ancient monument' now includes the study and protection
of remains below the ground as well as those that have always been
visible to stimulate enquiry.
