Sir Cecil Herbert Edward Chubb, Baronet, was born in Shrewton on 14th April 1876, eldest son of Alfred and Mary Chubb. Alfred – known as Fred – was the village saddler and harness maker, as was his father before him. Cecil Chubb, his son, was no slouch – after school he progressed to Christ’s College Cambridge where he was awarded a double first in Science and Law, and he went on to wealth and fortune. Well – so what – a bright boy who did very well, but otherwise nothing to mark Cecil out as worthy of future comment. Except for two accidents of fate that is.
Here is the first accident. Cecil had a keen interest in the heritage, culture and history of his local area in Wiltshire which meant that he was a familiar figure at local auctions. It so happened that he turned up at a sale run by Knight, Frank and Rutley Estate Agents here in Salisbury on 21st September 1915, and decided to buy (on a whim) a 30 acre chunk of Wiltshire downland to the north of Amesbury. Lot 15 cost him a total of £6600 (nearly £900k in today’s money), and in addition to the fields and dry valleys it also happened to contain a rather well known ancient monument. Cecil Chubb was now the proud owner of Stonehenge! Oh – and the other accident of fact happened 25 years earlier. Cecil was also a Bishop’s Boy – one of the very first to come to this school when it was set up by Bishop John Wordsworth in January 1890.
Reading the accounts of the purchase and what happened afterwards, you get the distinct impression that Cecil didn’t quite know what he was taking on. Apparently, the main reason he paid such a large sum was to preserve a national icon and prevent it from falling into foreign ownership – though some accounts also say that he bought it as a gift for his wife, Mary. Apparently, she didn’t like it a great deal. What he did find the following June was that Stonehenge had become the focus of an annual influx of Druids, tourists and various hangers-on who wanted to watch the sunrise on June 21st. Midsummer sunrise at the stones is not a new phenomenon – and perhaps that is one of the reasons that Cecil decided to give Stonehenge to the Nation in October 1918, and was made a Baronet by Lloyd George in return. Rather touchingly, there is a Chubb family coat of arms which features three stones arranged as a trilithon to mark the event.
What had Cecil now given away? One of the seven wonders of Britain (according to recent public opinion) a 10,000 year old monument site of which the most modern features are the massive 50 tonne sarsens which were put in place around 4.5 thousand years ago. Repeated excavation of the area around and within the stone circle has revealed multiple cremation and burial sites, but it is the monuments precise astronomical alignment that really causes the fuss. As the sun rises on the day of the solstice its rays bisect the entrance of the circle. Hardly a coincidence; modern archaeologists seem to think that Woodhenge, near Durrington, was the place of the living. At Woodhenge, an ancient timber circle was built so that the rays of the sun on the midwinter solstice passed through in perfect symmetry. Evidence of fires on the banks of the nearby River Avon suggests that the two circles, wood and stone, are linked, and that there was, perhaps a route of procession between the two which was used on the longest and shortest days of the year. There is not much doubt however that Stonehenge was a resting place for the dead.
Not that Cecil would have known, or even been able to guess much of this. After all, many of the archaeological digs have taken place since his time. What he did know was perhaps the only thing he shares with today’s druidical lunatic fringe; a sense that Stonehenge is iconic, representing as it does the continuing quest of humans for meaning, direction and faith – a quest that has inspired the construction of many other iconic buildings in more modern times. Try to bear that in mind when you recall the pictures on TV from earlier this week of the slightly bizarre events at the most famous stone circle in the world. Despite the antics of King Arthur Pendragon and his meta psychotic friends in the media-fuelled circus that is the 21st century Solstice, there is still a sense of awe and mystery that Stonehenge retains. I like to think that had something to do with an impulse purchase on that Autumn afternoon in 1915 by Cecil Chubb, Bishop’s Boy and last private owner of Stonehenge.
