6th August 2009, 05:38 PM
There isn?t a ninety degree bend in the A303 or the A344. If Stonehenge had been a hall and capability brown had been brought in to landscape the A303 and A344 would have been diverted. Its nigh on impossible the blend a diversion. As the roads around Stonehenge are natural, replace them with whatever will be fake. What brown and kent inherited was the problem of filling in the space created by moving the roads away from the Halls, roads which once had passed the front door. Browns landscape was the cheapest way to do it although this as a cost per area and how far away did they want the roads to be. I don?t think that he tried to create a natural looking landscape, he had to create a landscape that looked like it belonged to a Hall from the outside of the property just as formal as the gardens that had preceded, and it had to be cheap to run because they did not want to maintain large rebellious population to run it. This cheapest policy affected the whole estate management which went for really cheap extensive agriculture. I think that the ninety degree bend started as a result of the civil war but wonder if there are older examples? What I am interested in is the blending going on just beyond the property like the road. When you are driving towards a so called stately home it?s a pretty blunt slap in the face if you have to do a ninety degree turn ( i wonder if the are some 110+ degree ones, that would get very silly). Was it done on perpouse or were the owners saying sorry this not my problem. After taking the ninety degree bend I normally play the game with the kids of not being able to see the house which I reckon must lead to a number of car accidents which I think should be laid at the feet of the owners of these properties?...Anyway if ninety degree bends are a great British tradition maybe if the A303 etc are to be diverted they should be diverted using a ninety bend as this is a traditional way of doing it, anything else is bloody foreign and should be discriminated against although this is discrimination and so maybe some other angle could be found as a compromise.