Stonehenge
The biggest stones at Stonehenge were hauled about 15 miles, but the smaller bluestones came from Wales, more than 150 miles away. Nobody is quite sure how.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England
- First built
- The first earthwork enclosure dates to around 3000 BC; the stone circle was raised around 2500 BC
- Big stones
- Sarsens, up to about 7 metres tall and weighing around 25 tonnes on average
- Bluestones
- Smaller stones from the Preseli Hills in west Wales, roughly 150 miles away
- Altar Stone
- A six-tonne slab of sandstone shown in 2024 to have come from northern Scotland, not Wales
- Purpose
- Unknown, but linked to burial, ceremony and the midsummer and midwinter solstices
- Status
- UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986
- Care
- Managed by English Heritage on land partly owned by the National Trust
The stones that walked from Wales (and Scotland)
Stonehenge's smaller stones, the bluestones, were brought from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire, a journey of roughly 150 miles. Quarry sites at Carn Goedog and Craig Rhos-y-felin have been identified as sources, with evidence of Neolithic stone extraction. Then came a twist in 2024. Scientists studying the Altar Stone, the big slab lying in front of the tallest trilithon, showed that it did not come from Wales at all. Its mineral grains match rocks in north-east Scotland, which means the stone travelled at least 450 miles. That makes it one of the most remarkable transport feats of prehistoric Britain. How it was moved remains an open question. Sea routes, rivers, sledges and rollers have all been proposed, and no theory has settled the matter.
Not one monument, but many centuries of building
Stonehenge was not built in one go. Around 3000 BC, people dug a circular ditch and bank, with a ring of pits known as the Aubrey Holes, named after the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey. Some of these held cremated human remains, which suggests the site was a cemetery early on. The great sarsen stones went up around 2500 BC. The uprights and lintels were shaped to fit together, with mortise-and-tenon joints of the sort normally used in woodwork, and the lintels were linked by tongue-and-groove joins. The builders also made the uprights slightly wider towards the top, a trick that makes them look straighter from the ground. The sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, around 15 miles to the north, a distance that sounds modest until you consider that each stone weighs as much as several elephants.
Why build it? The best clues are in the sun
The main axis of Stonehenge lines up with the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset. Crowds still gather on the solstices to watch, and the alignment is widely thought to be deliberate. Recent research has pointed to the midwinter side as especially important. Just over two miles away lies Durrington Walls, a huge settlement where people feasted on pigs and cattle, and where the bones show that animals were brought from far afield. Many archaeologists see it as the place where builders and visitors gathered, with Stonehenge as the setting for remembering the dead. A connecting avenue links Stonehenge to the River Avon, and the nearby Durrington site had its own avenue and a timber circle. Together they suggest a ceremonial landscape rather than a lone monument.
Druids, aliens and Merlin: myths versus reality
Medieval storytellers decided Merlin had magicked the stones across from Ireland. Geoffrey of Monmouth told that tale in the 12th century, and it stuck for centuries. Later came the Druids. In the 1700s the antiquary William Stukeley popularised the idea that Druids built Stonehenge, and modern Druid groups still hold ceremonies there. The trouble is that Stonehenge is about 2,000 years older than the Druids of the Iron Age. The Romans, Saxons and Vikings did not build it either, and neither did aliens. The builders were Neolithic and early Bronze Age Britons, working without metal tools or the wheel in the way we might imagine.
What to look for when you visit
Look first at the lintels, the horizontal stones across the top. They are carefully fitted, and the curve of the circle is built into them. Spot the carvings. Some of the stones bear carved Bronze Age axe heads and a dagger shape, which can be seen from certain angles in the right light. Then look at the setting. The monument sits in open chalk grassland, with burial mounds called barrows dotted across the skyline. Walking the wider landscape, including the Avenue and the nearby Cursus, makes it clear how much more there is than the famous ring. And look at the leaning stones. Some have fallen and been re-erected, with concrete used in twentieth-century restoration work, so what you see is partly the work of modern engineers.
Notable people
- John Aubrey
- William Stukeley
- Geoffrey of Monmouth
- Mike Parker Pearson