Stonehenge

Visiting Stonehenge

Stonehenge is one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world. It is made up of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones. It is one of several megalithic type structures in the area, including some enormous earthworks, Woodhenge, and Durrington Walls.

Archaeologists have found four or five large Mesolithic postholes dating to around 8000 BC beneath the adjacent tourist car-park. These held pine posts around 0.75 metres (2.5 ft) in diameter which were erected and left to rot in place. Three or four of the posts were in an east-west alignment and may been part of some structure with ritual significance.

Around 4000 BC a cursus monument was built 600 metres north of the site as the first farmers began to clear the forest then covering the area.

The earliest phase of the main monument, the surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, has been dated to about 3100 BC.

The standing stones were erected around 2200 BC.

Stonehenge is located very near the junction of highway A303 and the smaller and less traveled A360, just west of Amesbury.

The 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 maps above show Stonehenge itself and the connected Avenue. Just to the north is the large Cursus. Some long barrow tombs and several tumuli are scattered around.

Approaching Stonehenge on foot

I am approaching Stonehenge from the north.

I'm on the path from Larkhill, crossing the fields and passing through the center of The Cursus.

Stonehenge is just visible on the horizon above the end of this path.

Some tumuli are on the horizon to the right.

A little further along I cross into The Cursus from the north. Tumuli are visible to the south-west.

Below, I cross The Cursus and look up its length toward the west. Even after millennia the large scale earthworks are visible.

As we cross the Cursus and look up its length toward the east, Woodhenge is somewhere off in the distance beyond the last line of trees.

Soon I arrive at Stonehenge!

Stonehenge

Here I am starting on the very good self-guided audio tour put together by English Heritage.

The A344 road runs right through Stonehenge, fairly close to the main circle of stones and right next to this outlying stone.

The larger and busier A303 runs very close, and you hear the constant traffic on the A303 throughout your visit to Stonehenge.

Woodhenge

Woodhenge is just north of Amesbury, and about 3 kilometers from Stonehenge.

It was a wooden structure similar in design to Stonehenge, built about 2000 BC.

Or, as it is reconstructed today, Concrete Post Henge.

As a marker there says:

"Woodhenge is so-called because it was originally a wooden structure of a type similar to Stonehenge. It was probably set up during the Bronze age circa 2,000 BC for ceremonial use. The concrete posts mark the positions of the original timbers, evidence for which was obtained by excavation. The rings are oval with the long axis aligned on the mid-summer sunrise. A bank with a ditch on the inner side surrounded the monument, which was entered by a causeway on the north-east."

At Durrington Walls are remains of a settlement from the Woodhenge — Stonehenge era. It's a massive circular earthwork, or henge, about 500m in diameter. It was built in the Neolithic period around 3100-2400 BC. Excavations in 1967 revealed two circular timber structures and vast quantities of animal bones which could indicate that feasting took place there.

Woodhenge is a short walk north out of Amesbury along the A345. Durrington Walls is in the open area on to the north up the slight rise.

The pub at the A345 / A3028 intersection is a nice place to get lunch.

Since summer 2004 archaeologists have located a number of hearthsites in sub-circular and rectangular wattle and daub huts and palisade postholes, identifying what may be an ancient village. Distinct differences have been noted between the occupation floors at the center of Durrington Walls and those around the periphery of the site. Those towards the centre are suspected by some researchers to have had a more ritualistic function than the more domestic-looking structures near the edge of the henge. Carbon dating suggests occupation somewhere around 2600-2400 BC, making it essentially the same age as the earliest Stonehenge formation. Early interpretations suggest that it was the settlement of the workers who erected Stonehenge. A circle of ditches and earthen banks at Durrington Walls enclosed concentric rings of huge timber posts. The archaeologist in charge of the excavation, Mike Parker Pearson, said that the evidence "shows us these two monuments were complementary" and that "Stonehenge was just one-half of a larger complex." See the English Heritage site and the Wikipedia page.

Be careful

Stonehenge, Woodhenge, Durrington Walls, and the surrounding prehistoric structures are within MOD land.

Stay on the path, there are at least expended flares in the woods off the path. MOD activities in this area include artillery training, so ordnance is possible. That's just an expended flare, but you still don't want to mess with it.

You will probably notice low-level helicopter flights around the area, and possibly hear artillery and armor. The Salisbury Plain is largely MOD land.

Practical Matters

There are plenty of places to find accommodation in Salisbury. I have stayed at the YHA hostel in Salisbury, a 200-year-old building in secluded grounds.

Amesbury and Stonehenge are maybe 20 minutes away from Salisbury by bus. There is an hourly tourist-oriented bus between Salisbury's main bus station and Stonehenge. But pay careful attention to the schedule and don't get stuck at Stonehenge — it could be a long 3 km trek back to Amesbury at the end of the day.

You can take a bus to Amesbury and walk to Woodhenge, about 1.5 to 2 kilometers north along the A345.

From there it's about 2.5 km to Larkhill, past the MOD barracks. Then turn south on a road that turns into a path leading directly through the woods (see the flare picture above) and across the fields toward Stonehenge (see the Stonehenge pictures above).

Then catch a bus from Stonehenge back to Salisbury.

Stonehenge and Hardy

Stonehenge is the setting of the next-to-last chapter of Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles". After 57 chapters of rural English squalor, drunkenness, libertine seductions, poultry keeping, secret pregnancies, infant mortality, dairy farming, estrangements, Brazilian agriculture, misunderstandings, evictions, and misdirected letters, our heroine has given up on the husband who abandoned her (for Brazilian agriculture) and taken up again with the former libertine (who had become an itinerant preacher, but takes Tess as his mistress). The husband reappears, Tess sends him away, and then gets into a heated argument with the libertine-preacher. She stabs him, exsanguinating him to the extent that the landlady notices blood soaking through the bed and into the ceiling of the room below.

Tess runs off and catches up to her husband, and they walk inland to hide for some time before escaping England from a port. They stay for five days in an abandoned house, are discovered by the cleaning woman, and take off cross country again, stumbling into Stonehenge in the night.

Then the posse shows up, and in the short final chapter Tess is executed.