Stonehenge

Stonehenge Map

A Scheduled Ancient Monument and UNESCO World Heritage Site, the megalithic circle of Stonehenge is the United Kingdom's most internationally famous tourist destination. Set on the vast escarpment of Salisbury Plain, the complexity of the site provides a glimpse at the variety of long forgotten social and religious systems that helped to create it.

Picnic at Hanging Rock! Stonehenge was built in stages over a period of 1500 years. Its most famous features, the great Sarsen Stones, were also amongst the last to be completed. Even so these are what capture the imagination and it is possible they are what have given the site its name: “henge” may relate to hanging, the two uprights surmounted by a horizontal resembling a gallows. The earliest stages of construction constitute the now difficult to discern bank and ditch earthworks. Subsequent stages including the smaller Bluestones and the Sarsens were added by differing peoples who inhabited the area in later times.

The Physical Sensation of the Place! Wild and windswept, the great high plain north of Salisbury is a land of grass and sky. Even today many visitors are struck by something less evident than the massive stones themselves, a spiritual presence that is difficulty to quantify. The area surrounding the site features many barrows, both Long and Round, indicating the extended period over which it has been regarded as sacred. For many people today the site still has religious significance, with more than 20,000 attending the 2005 celebrations of the summer solstice.