27 Facts About Stonehenge

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles west of Amesbury.

Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage; the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.

Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings.

Stonehenge evolved in several construction phases spanning at least 1500 years.

The University of Buckingham's Humanities Research Institute believes that the community who built Stonehenge lived here over a period of several millennia, making it potentially "one of the pivotal places in the history of the Stonehenge landscape.

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Between 2017 and 2021, studies by Professor Pearson and his team suggested that the bluestones used in Stonehenge had been moved there following dismantling of a stone circle of identical size to the first known Stonehenge circle (110m) at the Welsh site of Waun Mawn in the Preseli Hills.

Stonehenge is therefore interpreted as functioning as an enclosed cremation cemetery at this time, the earliest known cremation cemetery in the British Isles.

Evidence of a 110-m stone circle at Waun Mawn near Preseli, which could have contained some or all of the stones in Stonehenge, has been found, including a hole from a rock that matches the unusual cross-section of a Stonehenge bluestone "like a key in a lock".

Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records.

Geoffrey Wainwright, president of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and Timothy Darvill, of Bournemouth University, have suggested that Stonehenge was a place of healing—the primeval equivalent of Lourdes.

Stonehenge megaliths include smaller bluestones and larger sarsens.

The presence of these "ringing rocks" seems to support the hypothesis that Stonehenge was a "place for healing" put forward by Darvill, who consulted with the researchers.

Researchers studying DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains across Britain determined that the ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge were early European farmers who came from the Eastern Mediterranean, travelling west from there, as well as Western hunter-gatherers from western Europe.

The wealth from such trade probably permitted the Wessex people to construct the second and third phases of Stonehenge and indicates a powerful form of social organisation.

Twelfth-century Historia Regum Britanniae, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, includes a fanciful story of how Stonehenge was brought from Ireland with the help of the wizard Merlin.

Stonehenge has changed ownership several times since King Henry VIII acquired Amesbury Abbey and its surrounding lands.

Stonehenge was one of several lots put up for auction in 1915 by Sir Cosmo Gordon Antrobus, soon after he had inherited the estate from his brother.

The ruling recognized that members of any genuine religion have a right to worship in their own church, and Stonehenge is a place of worship to Neo-Druids, Pagans and other "Earth based' or 'old' religions.

When Stonehenge was first opened to the public it was possible to walk among and even climb on the stones, but the stones were roped off in 1977 as a result of serious erosion.

Stonehenge began the excavation of many of the barrows in the area, and it was his interpretation of the landscape that associated it with the Druids.

Stonehenge excavated some 24 barrows before digging in and around the stones and discovered charred wood, animal bones, pottery and urns.

Stonehenge identified the hole in which the Slaughter Stone once stood.

Stonehenge located a bottle of port in the Slaughter Stone socket left by Cunnington, helped to rediscover Aubrey's pits inside the bank and located the concentric circular holes outside the Sarsen Circle called the Y and Z Holes.

In 1993 the way that Stonehenge was presented to the public was called 'a national disgrace' by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.

The point where the Stonehenge Avenue meets the river was excavated and revealed a previously unknown circular area which probably housed four further stones, most likely as a marker for the starting point of the avenue.

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In 2010, the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project discovered a "henge-like" monument less than 0.

The new discovery was made as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project which began in the summer of 2010.