ABSTRACT
In legal terminology, a ‘misprision’ is a theft – the taking of something without
permission. In the essays that follow, buildings have been taken up without
the permission of their designers, and have been made to mean things that
their designers did not have in mind. The first of these thefts was the most
literal – the actual removal of a monumental building from one kingdom to
another: Stonehenge was forcibly removed from Ireland and re-erected
on Salisbury Plain as a memorial to the British dead. That is what Geoffrey of
Monmouth tells us in his account of 1136.1 What happened was that the
British king, Aurelius, was going round his kingdom repairing damage done by
the Saxons. He restored York, and went on to Winchester, from where he
visited a monastery near Salisbury, where there were buried the bodies of the
princes and leaders who had been betrayed to the Saxons. Aurelius wanted
to erect a special memorial to these distinguished men, and he was advised
that the person to provide him with what he wanted was the prophet Merlin.
It was good advice. Merlin knew of just the thing. It was the ring of stones on
Mount Killaraus in Ireland, which were much more impressive than anything
