Outer rough faces
Bumpy, lumpy, with builders’ tooling and some other scars. Reminds me of the wall built by an apprentice under the stairs of a house where no one would see.
Initially, they used flaking techniques, some scars are 3 foot long, probably just like the hole on the back of Trilithon One’s S52. Using really heavy maulstones weighing 50 0r 60 pounds, to chip off the old block into a four sided shape. Then, came the smaller flaking of around a foot of sarsen removed. To sharpen up the shape.
Longitudinal ridges
These are the six-foot-high vertical lines, well seen on the bottom of the outer face of Trilithon Two’s Stone 54. There’s two. And on the centre of the outer face of T2’s S53 (Skinny). It looks like a nose. This is a part of the coarse dressing, the initial shaping.
Transverse tooling
Between these long ridges are finer, some 6 inches bands of hammerstone bashing. When I first saw these on the colourless, naked stones, I thought it was some digital error, such was the perfection of spacing.
Seen on the outer of T2’s S54 (Fatty). Between the vertical ridges, and above the seeming half way lines.
Many have pointed out that there is a certain tinge to the greyness in some sarsens. An orange and a purple. If it was there, back in the day, then bashed, chipped, and picked and polished away. To a pristine, homogenous light grey. And now, fast-forward 4,500 years so that rusted iron and dissolved tourmaline has worked its way up, or on the surface, we don’t know. Maybe the builders saw the colour and placed them, just so.
It is only Trilithon Four’s outer face that point north and has the better shrubbery of lichen, moss, algae and moulds. T1 and T2’s outer faces are southern facing and are sun catchers in the height of summer. Still there is plenty of colour, plenty of flora. But more notably there is more interesting staining. Perhaps the heat of the sun, hurries the process of weathering more.
