Sailors use picket sled and ropes to erect standing stone at customer attraction

Sailors from Royal Navy plane provider HMS Queen Elizabeth have used conventional strategies to maneuver and erect a three-and-a-half tonne standing stone.

The process involving a picket sled and ropes was carried out with workers and volunteers at Butser Historical Farm in Chalton, Hampshire, to mark the centre’s fiftieth anniversary.

The standing stone, which was moved roughly 30 metres earlier than being stood up, is fashioned from Purbeck limestone from Swanage, Dorset, the place it has been quarried since no less than the time of the Roman empire.

Simon Jay, director of Butser Historical Farm, mentioned: “The standing stone will act as a 50-year marker for us and we’re planning to coincide its erection with the Council for British Archaeology’s Pageant of Archaeology which has the theme of journeys this yr, so the motion of the stone matches effectively with that theme.

“We may also try and align the stone to the midsummer dawn and over time we might add extra smaller stones within the surrounding space that may create completely different alignments akin to at midwinter too.”

He added: “This is a crucial yr for us. Butser Historical Farm started life within the Seventies as an experimental archaeology website taking a look at Iron Age life.

“We have been and nonetheless are utterly floor breaking with no different website within the UK taking such an in depth take a look at how life was actually lived by our historical ancestors.”

Reverend Eddie Wills, from HMS Queen Elizabeth, mentioned he organised the ship’s involvement after he had beforehand volunteered at Butser.

He mentioned: “I knew how a lot the ship’s firm would take pleasure in visiting the farm and getting caught in.

“I bought in contact with Butser to supply our providers for a group venture and that is what was recommended. It struck me as an ideal alternative to display the Royal Navy’s can-do perspective.”