Stonehenge

"Here oft, when Evening sheds her twilight ray, And gilds with fainter beam departing day, With breathless gaze, and cheek with terror pale, The lingering shepherd startles at the tale, How, at deep midnight, by the moon's chill glance, Unearthly forms prolong the viewless dance; While on each whisp'ring breeze that murmurs by, His busied fancy hears the hollow sigh."

From "Stonehenge," by Thomas Stokes Salmon, 1823

Suspended in time on the flat grasslands of England's Salisbury Plain some eighty miles west of London, Stonehenge has intrigued investigators for many centuries.

Despite all the research that has led us to learn about its age and construction, its purpose still remains a mystery. Speculation on the reason it was built range from human sacrifice to astronomy. Even the builders of the monument remain unknown. Efforts to prove that they were Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Druids, Buddhist, Mayans, Survivors of the lost Continent of Atlantis, or even visitors from another planet, have all failed.

Investigations over the last 100 years have revealed that Stonehenge was most likely built by not one but a series of ancient people, using various building materials and methods. Stonehenge was built in at least four stages, between 3100 and 1100 BC. In its first phase of construction it is believed the monument consisted of a simple circular embankment enclosing a few wooden poles and upright slabs, including the Heel Stone. The Heel Stone also known as the Altar Stone is a large dressed block of sandstone that lies embedded in the ground. The second phase was marked by the formation of two rows of bluestones forming a crescent, or horseshoe, at the centre of the site. The doorways and trilithons were created in phase three, and in phase four, about 1100 BC, the bluestones were reset and the roadway extended.

After 1100 BC, Stonehenge seemed to have been left untended and unnoticed. Until about AD 1130 when an English clergyman named Henry of Huntingdon set out to tell his Country what a mysterious place Stonehenge was. In his History of the English, Henry wrote of "Stanenges, where stones of wonderful size have been erected after the manner of doorways…and no one can conceive how such great stones have been so raised loft, or why they were built there." Stanenges is an Old English word meaning, "hanging stone." Since than there has been many books, articles and reports written about this place of mystery, power and enchantment.

The modern age has not been altogether kind to Stonehenge. There is a major highway running no more than 100 yards away from the stones, and a commercial circus has sprung up around it, complete with parking lots, gift shops and ice cream stands. The stones we see today represent Stonehenge in ruin. It is estimated that as many as half of the site's original stones have vanished, with nothing but indentations in the ground to show where they once stood. There has been serious damage to some of the smaller bluestones resulting from the close visitor contact (prohibited since 1978) and the prehistoric carvings on the larger sarsen stones (a type of sandstone harder than granite) show signs of significant wear. Many others lie toppled and broken. Even with the missing and broken there is enough of every part to preserve the idea of the whole. The whole was a monument consisting of two rings of upright stones enclosing a pair of horseshoe-shaped stone forms. Completing the monument are several solitary stones, including the heel stone, numerous pits, a shallow circular boundary ditch and a broad roadway that breaches the ditch at its Northeastern rim and connects Stonehenge with the Avon River, about a mile and a half distance.

While it can't be said with certainty what this awe-inspiring sight was for, we can say that it wasn't constructed for any casual purpose. Only something very important to the ancients would have been worth the effort and investment that it took to construct Stonehenge.

By Kristen O'Conner