Summer Outing Catches the Midwinter Sun

On 14 June eighteen members of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society enjoyed a privilege visit to The Salisbury Museum organised by Lavender Buckland. Curator Jane Ellis-Schon explained the rationale behind her design of the state-of-the-art archaeological display in the new Wessex Gallery. Chronology runs backwards from Norman Old Sarum to the Old Stone Age, via highlights such as the Saxon Warminster Jewel and the gold hair braids of the Late Neolithic Amesbury Archer. The sun of the midwinter solstice peeps between the stones of a projected image of Stonehenge as a whole day, and several birds, pass in twenty minutes. It would have been possible to spend a whole day among these marvels, but time had to be found for the British Museum’s travelling exhibition “Writing for Eternity: Decoding Ancient Egypt”, introduced by Joyce Paesen, and cake.