Preservation or natural decay

By Steve Cunningham

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SO HISTORIANS know best, do they Sea Henge, a 4,000-year-old mysterious circle of oak stumps found off the north Norfolk coast, has�been moved to a preservation laboratory, despite the best efforts of a group of protesting Druids.

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��Press Association

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'This is a gift from the past to the present and it shouldn't be disturbed,' says the protesters' leader, Michael 'Buster' Nolan. 'English Heritage are vandals, destroying our culture. If they were defacing a work of art, they would be locked up.'

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Sea Henge comprises 55 stumps, with a central pillar of gnarled wood thought to have been the altar. The monument�became submerged�as the East Anglian coast eroded. The monument only came to light in 1998 when high tides washed away a protective layer of peat.

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English Heritage's chief archaeologist, David Miles, says: 'I'm afraid the protesters have got the wrong idea. We would dearly love to leave the circle where it is, but if we did, it would be destroyed.

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'Another sea henge up the coast was uncovered by the sea in the 1970s and it's already vanished. We have to take the timbers away and preserve them, because once uncovered, they need to be treated or they'll simply crumble. We can't put them back in the sea afterwards, so they'll have to be preserved somewhere on land we hope in this part of Norfolk.'

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The stumps were removed on stretchers and taken for treatment at Flag Fen, another Bronze Age site near Peterborough. The relics�have been initially preserved in water tanks while highly technical conservation treatment is carried out and detailed drawings made.
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A spokesman for the archaeological unit says: 'They are very fragile and the combination of burrowing molluscs and tidal erosion means that they won't last much longer. It's a shame that the excavation will divorce the circle from its highly dramatic setting, but it's important to realise that it was never constructed on the coast.'

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