After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Stonehenge: 10 Strangest Facts

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

It wasn't made by Druids (or Aliens or Merlin the wizard). But it was a garden centre. Get ready for the 10 strangest facts (mostly) about Stonehenge! Maddy Pelling takes Anthony Delaney back among the stones.Edited by Amy Haddow. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Certain conditions apply. Details at phys.ca. Hello, my name's Anthony. No, stop. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I messed up. OK, go. OK.

Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And Maddie has dragged me kicking and screaming back to Stonehenge for another episode. But in today's episode, we are going to be talking about the mysteries, the myths, and the legends that have grown up around one of the most mysterious prehistoric monuments and that, of course, is Stonehenge. High summer. Stonehenge's outline cuts against a clear sky. Among the stones, a circle of white-robed figures stands.

Long beards tugged by the breeze, sharp sickles in their hands. They burst into a weird melody that echoes off the eternal stones themselves. One of them scratches his beard once, twice, a third time. Confounded thing, he mutters and pulls it right off. What a waste of money that was.

Into the midst of this august ring of the ancient order of the druids, stumbles a crowd of would-be initiates. They're blindfolded. One of them yelps when his shin bangs off a rock. At a command, the blindfolds are removed and the most noble archdruid, perched on a beer bottle case, lights a mysterious blue fire and begins to utter the secret, sacred words. Which are so secret that, of of course we cannot repeat them here. With a great

way that this battle acts across the Salisbury Plain the whole thing is done. The bards unhitch their beards and take off their nightgowns. Everyone goes back to the refreshment tent to enjoy full of the best kinds of cake. As the sun climbs down to bed, it marvels what it has witnessed here today. The year is 1905, and for the first time ever in its 5,000 year history, a druid ceremony has been held at Stonehenge. Welcome to After Dark.

It's time for the 10 strange but true facts about Stonehenge. Ten strange but true facts. OK, I want to get straight into this because I have the potential facts and Maddie knows. I don't know whether or not they are going to be real or not, but I have the potential facts and Maddie knows, I don't know whether or not they are going to be real or not, but I'm going to do the statements and then Maddie is going to tell me whether or not it's stone fact or stone fiction. I just made that up. So, okay, my first word, Maddie, is that Stonehenge, if this is true, I'm interested. Stonehenge means execution site. True or not true?

So perhaps this is true. Okay. So the earliest- Yet another maybe. Yeah. When it comes to Stonehenge, nobody knows. The earliest written record that we have of Stonehenge is by an Anglo-Saxon priest called Henry of Huntington in around 1130. This is AD, by the way, not B.C.E. We struggled significantly in the last episode with the maths. In it, in this record that Henry of Huntington writes, he calls it Stan Engers, which is Anglo-Saxon for the hanging stones. Now, do not necessarily get too excited because this could either refer to stones that hang in the air, i.e. you know, that raise up the monument.

Yeah, and of course, you know, when you think about the sort of lintel piece that's still in place today. Or it can mean the stones where people were hung. That is not to say that people were hung there in the prehistoric period. It might be that the Anglo-Saxons themselves are the ones hanging people there. The other thing, and I think this is quite telling, is that in the Anglo-Saxon period, gallows were built with two uprights and a horizontal beam across, which is very much like the stones that we can still see at Stonehenge. So it could just be that they're just describing them like the gallows, right?

They are, aren't they? I think Stonehenge probably doesn't mean execution size. Yeah, I think also to add fuel to your theory there. Yeah, to add fuel to your theory, an angling sex and body has been discovered at the site and it had been decapitated. So there was obviously contemporary execution going on there. So it might mean execution site, doesn't mean it was an execution site. At the moment it was constructed.

Yeah. Next. Okay. Next. Okay. I think this is true because something smells off about this connection to me. So Stonehenge has nothing to do with druids. I think this is true. Correct.

Yeah. Until the 18th century, that is. Yeah, and then it does. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true. Then it's like fake druids. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if you go to the summer or the winter solstice, why can't I say solstice? If you go to the summer or winter solstice at Stonehenge now, you'll see lots of people who identify today as druids, as a religion. But the idea that druids built Stonehenge kicks off in the 18th century with one of my dream human beings, the antiquary William Stuckley.

He's a vicar and an amateur, what we would now call an archaeologist. And he's particularly obsessed amongst other things with Stonehenge. I believe he does a lot of work on Avebury as well. The other stone circle we talked about in our previous episode. In 1740, he publishes a book called Stonehenge, a temple restored to the British Druids. Ooh, 1740, okay. And it's, I mean, it's a delightful read, do check it out. But this idea of historical

Druids, Druids in the actual past. So historical Druids, you know, they really did exist. They were part of Celtic society, and they lived in the British Isles from around about 800 BC to 40 BC. And Julius Caesar mentions him in his writings about Britain. So there is a precedent for, but of course they're much later than Stonehenge itself as we discovered last episode. But William Stuckley, this 18th century antiquary, he just assumes that these are the people who built Stonehenge. He just becomes obsessed with the druids. And he basically becomes a neo-druid. He does things like he turns his back garden into a druidic temple. I'm pretty sure, and I'd need to check this, but I think he has one of his children who sadly dies buried in a druidic ceremony in his garden

as well. So he's kind of, you know, he's really invested in this. And it's all kind of tied up with this, this idea of Stonehenge. To be fair to Stokely though, and he just get a lot of things right. And you know, he is one of the fathers of archeology, so I don't want to bash him too much. And I do have, he holds a special place in my heart, but he, he's the first person to realize that Stonehenge is aligned with the solstice. So he does get some things right, he just attributes it to the Druids. But this idea of the Druids having built Stonehenge and that it's some kind of temple really, really sticks in the imagination of the British and it does not disappear. So in 1781, so 41 years

after Stuckley publishes his book about Stonehenge, there is an order founded in Britain called the Ancient Order of Druids and this just continues to grow throughout the 19th century. So these are people who identify as Druids, they practice Druidical rituals. The first Druid ceremony ever held at Stonehenge is not in prehistory, it's in 1905. And I have a picture to show you from a few years later, 1908, because it's one, a wild picture, but two, there's someone very unexpected in it. And don't give away who it is just yet, but please describe. Okay. So it is a picture of loads of fellas with beards, it's black and white, and loads of fellas

with beards and crooks and they, it's, yeah, as Maddy said, it's early Edwardian, they're some of the, the men's that are, the men's? The men's? The men that are not in a white robe type thing with a hood, which is very disconcerting, they are in like black dinner suit type things. It's all very formal. I see some merrell chains in the background. What fascinates me about this and everything that you're talking about is and it gives me the ick a little bit, is how this is nation building from falsehoods. And that becomes more telling when you reveal, as you're

about to do, I would imagine, who is at the centre of this image. Yeah. So, Stud with all these druids, this is in 1908, is a young man who many would recognise as Winston Churchill. He is instantly recognised, but he doesn't look like your stereotypical Churchill, war Churchill obviously, because this is 40 years earlier, but it's still Churchill. You can still tell that him obviously, he looks very much like himself. Yeah. And it's, it's quite unexpected to find, because I suppose we associate Druid adjacent beliefs, certainly later on in the 20th century, with kind of like the hippies and liberalism and not necessarily Winston Churchill. So yeah, interesting.

Nonetheless, you could imagine nowadays Boris Johnson inserting himself in a picture like that, couldn't you? You could imagine this kind of co-opting of ideas of Britishness in that kind of almost propaganda looking thing. It's not a propaganda picture, but you know. Surely Boris has done some kind of photo shoot at Stonehenge. With some, yeah, with hanging out of it or something. He probably took the election bus there or something. Yeah, like climbing on it or something like that. Allegedly.

From one political icon to another, Washington. Apparently in our third Fact or Myth instalment, apparently, I don't know this, there is a full scale replica in Washington state. Well, I feel like I would know if there's a full-scale replica in Washington state, is there? This is also true. I am obsessed with this, right? Okay, so, yes, there is a full-scale replica of Stonehenge, and it's not Stonehenge as it looks now, it's Stonehenge imagined how it would have looked in its heyday, right? So, it's got the outer circle has got like, the lintels are going all the way around the whole circle and stuff. So it's kind of a bit more supposedly how it would have looked. This was built in 1918, so the end of World War I, by an American millionaire and interestingly a pacifist, and this is going to be important in a second, called Sam Hill. And he built this in Washington

State on the cliffs above Columbia River. Sam Hill's obsession with Stonehenge's understanding of it was that it had been a place of human sacrifice. Now, cut to the end of World War I, and he's a pacifist, and his view on World War I is that it's been a kind of human sacrifice, and he wants to commemorate that to mark the human tragedy. So he builds this and it's a memorial to the First World War. It's stunning. I'm looking at a picture of it now. So let me describe it for you. I will post this on socials.

But it is a beautiful image actually. And it is this stone monument that is, I would say, only Stonehenge-esque in that you're telling me this is what they thought maybe it might have looked like. It's beside a river, there's hills, it's this vast skyscape in the background. It looks really dramatic, really beautiful. And it's, you know, it's actually quite a poignant monument given what it's supposed to remember. But tell me this, like, do we know if this is what Stonehenge actually looks like? Or is this just a kind of a yet another interpretation? Like, I didn't realize, just for listeners who may not be seeing this image, the circle

of stones around the outer edge are topped off as Maddy's describing these lintels, but they go the whole way around in a full circle. Like I don't know if I knew that that was potentially what that was. I think there's something so interesting about it being a war memorial. I agree. And you know, particularly World War I, you know, this is predominantly a conflict fought in Europe. And I think there's something about kind of Britishness being transported to the American

landscape here, European-ness, you know, it's, it's, I find it fascinating. The other thing I will say is I'm obsessed with people who reproduce. I mean, it's kind of a little bit 18th century, like building a sort of Roman temple, isn't it? It's a folly. Despite the fact that it's a replica, it's really charged. Just looking at the image, obviously I've never been there, but just looking at the image, it feels really charged. I will say this though, before we move on to the next point, which I've seen on my piece of paper and I can barely bring myself to read. But the thing about this is, what was I going to say? Oh yes. The thing about this is, you

know I love the 18th century, you know it's my speed spot, I hate replicas in the 18th century. Do you? So we're getting, you know the way in the last episode I was like, oh my god, Maddie is a closeted antiquarian and this is, I'm now having some similar realisation about myself but in the opposite direction where I'm just like, oh, I hate all those reconstructed things in the 18th century. I hate them. I just, they feel that to me. What you're saying is if we both time travel back to the 18th century, we would not be

friends because I'd be like, I'm digging in a field and I've just go with this Roman villa and like look at my collection of arrow, like flint arrowheads. And you'd be like, do not talk to me under any circumstances. I'd be like, are you bringing me champagne? Because if you're not, there's no need for this interaction. I think that might just be my motto in life generally. That is our dynamic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, the next bit, they're going to make me say this to earn my keep

after dark this week. And it says, Merlin built Stonehenge. And it's true. No, of course it's not true. You would be amazed by how long people have been telling this version. This is a theory that has a history of its own. So we've covered this story before on After Dark in an episode that we did with Amy Jeffs called The Mythic Origins of Britain. But here's the potted version. So Geoffrey of Monmouth, friend of the pod, in 1136, he suddenly comes out with this idea that in the fifth century, so this is someone in the 12th century doing history about the fifth century, he says that hundreds of nobles

were slaughtered on the Salisbury Plain by the evil King Vortigern and that the good king, who's a king called Aurelius, returns and he tells Merlin of King Arthur fame that he wants a memorial to the people who've died on his behalf. So Merlin goes to a hill in Ireland, nothing to do with the Saltery Plain. Now you've got me. Oh, he's so self-obsessed. Now we've got his interest. He goes to a hill in Ireland, where there's a stone circle that, of course, has been built by giants because why not? We're full of those in Ireland yet. Yeah. And this stone circle, the stones have come from Africa. Just keep up. So the giants

have taken the stones from Africa or outsourced them, who knows, they've made this stone circle and Merlin is like, right, I'm going to move this stone circle to the Salisbury Plain as this memorial. So he uses magic or mathematics as some version say. Mathematics is magic to me. I love that they're just interchangeable. Yeah, exactly. It's all Greek to us. So he moves the stones and there is a late 12th century illustration that shows a giant helping Merlin move the stones to Stonehenge. It's bizarre.

Now, I will say, I sort of feel about a lot of medieval history how you do about prehistory. How do I feel about prehistory, Maddie? You love it. No, I think I haven't found my way into it where I'm not all consumed by it. That's not to say that it's not interesting. It's my failing that I haven't found my way in. Oh, I feel like that about prehistory for me too, that this is my failing by the way, 100%. I may be making light of it, but this is my shortcomings, absolutely. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers.

Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. So folks, you might have noticed the weather's changing out there. The sun appears to be out. The days are longer. This is in the northern atmosphere, of course. And it's got me excited for road trips, days out exploring, and long walks to castles on windswept crags. And if you're looking forward to all that too, I've got the perfect companion podcast to join you on your adventures this summer. I'm Dan Snow, host of the Dan Snow's History Hip podcast, where I whisk you away into the greatest stories in history. Join me on the high seas as we follow the swashbuckling escapades of Francis Drake on the Spanish main.

We unravel the myths of the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. I'll tell you everything you need to know about how the American Revolution started and what it would have taken for you to survive the Black Death in medieval Europe. Rackets, luck. This is the podcast you need if you seek to escape into history. And we can all use a little escape at the moment. Check out Dan Snow's history here. Where have you got your podcasts? Yeah, and I think it's the, this medieval thing of like, the blurring of fact and fiction

and oh yeah, there's a giant who's helping Merlin move the state. Like I need something more concrete. I just, yeah, it's too much for me. They were very good at doing illustrated manuscripts though. So that's why I do quite like a little bit of medieval now and again. Actually do you know what? Talking about drawing stuff. Number five, Christopher Wren, graffitied on Stonehenge. True or not true?

Potentially true. Oh, geez. Yes. More potentials. Uh-huh. So we know that in the 18th and well, in the late 17th to the 19th century, people, not just Wren, but people, visitors to Stonehenge regularly graffiti on it. So this is, as anyone who has bought my book Writing on the Wall, available wherever you get your books, will know, people from this period of history routinely wrote on the surfaces around them. This was nothing new. And part of that was

tourist graffiti. So people would go to particularly ancient sites, you get it with British marines deployed to places like Pompeii, where they go to a ruin and they will carve their name on it. They want to document that they were there in that space. And Stonehenge was no different. You get it all across Britain, you get it on castles, you get it in churches. Christopher Wren, potentially. So he grew up in Wiltshire, East Noil, which is only fifteen miles away. So there is a piece of graffiti on one of the stones that says, I Wren. Ian Wren. Now, Ian, yeah, Ian.

Good old 18th century famous person, Ian Wren. Sidebar, when did the name Ian come into being? Probably not the 18th century. Probably not the 18th century. No. So I'm just thinking, have I ever come across an Ian in the 18th century? I have not, no. No, I have not. So this could potentially be Christopher Wren. We do know that he was very, very interested in Stonehenge and obviously in architectural

structures and there was, you know, a real fascination, as we've already said, in the late 17th, early 18th century with Stonehenge, this idea that it was potentially a temple in some way. So yeah, intriguing. Now this is also important. The diameter of the inner dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, designed by Wren of course, is the same diameter as the inner circle of the monument. Is it? I mean, I've stood under that dome in St. Paul's and obviously it's big, but

it doesn't seem like the same, mind you, of course, because it's just further away, isn't it? That's what that is. This is why I don't like views. I just perspective is not a thing that I excel in. I have no comment. Sometimes people call me, you know, that the priest Dougal from Father's Head. And that is one of those Dougal moments that I and I do have it. I absolutely have that thing about like, once I was watching a documentary and it was just, it started by going, it's more than 500 years old and I shouted out the moon. And I was like, what? It doesn't make any sense. I mean, the moon is technically more than 500 years old, but like, I just, no, exactly. So that's all I'm going with. But yeah, it's,

you didn't realize that someone is going to come and take your PhD off you at some point. I ask all the time, can they take PhDs? I ask that and they probably can. And this will probably be one of the reasons, one of the many reasons. This will cost it. Maddie, do you know what? I'm just a bit warm again. I was really warm yesterday and I'm really warm today. I think it's throwing me off my concentration. What you need is to be stood on the windswept Salisbury Plain in amongst the mystical stones of Stonehenge.

I would do that. I absolutely would as long as there was nobody else there talking to me, I would do it. 100%. That sounds quite nice. Well, you'll have to go and stay with me and we'll go at like in the middle of the night. You're moving. Pointless now. She says that at the end when she knows she's going. Do you remember the last time when I stayed in your house and your neighbor saw... I didn't know I was staying in Maddie's house and I had to... Can I say this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know I was staying in Maddie's house and I had to, can I say this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know I was staying at Maddie's house and I wasn't prepared so I didn't have an

overnight bag so I had to go and buy some underwear and I just was nowhere near the house so I just bought underwear and like, I think it was like Tesco or somewhere Maddie, was it? Yeah, and my next door neighbor worked in Tesco and my husband was away at the time. He was in like Cyprus or something for like six months. So he had not been around for a really long time. Oh, I'm going red. Why am I going red? I know nothing happened. Oh my God. Yeah. And then she sees us in Tesco with Anthony buying pants.

Not just buying pants, pants and champagne and like rose wine and red wine and stuff and probably chocolate as well. We were having a very romantic night in. Okay, excuse me. Can we just not give the impression that we were drinking three bottles of wine that we were drinking? Yeah, I don't know why we were drinking, but we were drinking. We probably did to be fair. Yeah. Oh my God, that just made me go really red. And I didn't even know, obviously, because I didn't know Maddie's neighbor, but Maddie was like, oh my God, that's my neighbor. I was like, oh, this looks like an affair, but that's fine.

It's fine. I never, I never enlightened us. She's probably to this day, we don't live there anymore. Thank God. She probably thought good riddance. And if she's listening to this podcast now, she's like, I knew there was something going on between the two of them. It's like, yes, a podcast. A podcast. Yep. That is After Dark Lore because that, when you stayed at my house that time, we recorded a pilot episode to pitch to history hits. So After Dark exists because of all that champagne that we drank and our affair. We've been very professional.

Next fact, okay, I kind of know about this because we spoke about it in episode one, the Blue Stones can sing. Yes. Okay. I am so obsessed with this. So as we know, the Blue Stones, which is one of the circles at Stonehenge come from the Preseli Hills, specifically a village called, sorry to any Welsh speakers out there, Maen Clogoch, I believe that's how you say it. So the stones, as we said in episode one, when you strike them, they make a sound and the church in this village, whose name I'm not going to repeat, The church in this village, whose name I'm not going to repeat, as I said in episode one, the church bells were made out of bluestone until the 18th century. That is, I just find

this magical. So they have this kind of resonance. And interestingly, this musicality of Stonehenge crops up in one of my all time favourite novels, Thomas Hardy's Test the D'Urbervilles. Have you ever read it, Anthony? Yeah, and I agree with it. It's not one of my all time favourites, Thomas Hardy's Tess the Derbavils. Have you ever read it, Anthony? Yeah, and I agree with it. It's not one of my all time favourites, but I do really like it. I would say Far from the Madding Crowd is superior, but I do love Tess. But at the end of Tess, for anyone who doesn't know the story, she murders her abuser and she runs, it's

set in the West Country, and she runs to Stonehenge and she sleeps in the middle of the stones. And she describes, she says something like, it hums hearken about the circle. And then Hardy's description of the circle, I'll just read it because it's lovely, says, the wind playing upon the edifice produced a booming tune like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp. Lovely. That's nice. Just so nice. And it's so interesting at the end of that novel that Stonehenge becomes this kind of symbol in the novel for this sort of paganistic, quite brutal part of the landscape. There's been a murder committed and it's kind of like ancient truth and Tess

who has been rejected and marginalised by modern 19th century society and the moral judgments of Victorian England retreats back to this kind of pagan barbaric space as Hardy sees it. And yeah, if you haven't read it, get reading. It's so good. It is good. Music Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers.

Accept with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. So folks, you might have noticed the weather's changing out there. The sun appears to be out.

The days are longer. This is in the Northern atmosphere, of course. And it's got me excited for road trips, days out exploring, and long walks to castles on windswept crags. And if you're looking forward to all that too, I've got the perfect companion podcast to join you on your adventures this summer. I'm Dan Snow, host of the Dan Snow's History Hip podcast, where I whisk you away into the greatest stories in history. Join me on the high seas as we follow the swashbuckling escapades of Francis Drake on the Spanish main. We unravel the myths of the Spartans at the Battle of

Thermopylae. I'll tell you everything you need to know about how the American Revolution started and what it would have taken for you to survive the Black Death in medieval Europe. Rackets, luck. This is the podcast you need if you seek to escape into history. And we can all use a little escape at the moment check out dance knows history wherever you get your podcasts You are making me go into all the corners of my thing at the minute. Aliens, Madeleine Louise Pelling. I know Louise is not your middle name, but it is now. It's not my middle name. Okay. Not true. You have to give this as much weight as you've given singing stones. Go on. Do I?

Okay. Oh my God. Right. Just to clarify, I do not believe that the Stonehenge has been built by aliens. But she does believe the stones sing. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I mean, they probably do. I've never had the opportunity to strike one.

Next solstice, maybe. If you go to the solstice and you see me there, whacking the stones, just leave me to it. Oh my god. You'll know why. No, please make sure that you're videoing that like on your phone if it is because that's breakdown material and I want to see it. Absolutely. Okay. So the, I can't believe I'm saying these words, the first Stonehenge alien connection comes into being in 1968, as you might imagine.

Yes, and you might imagine, with a global smash hit called Chariots of the Gods, question mark, by a man called Eric Von Daniken. And in it, he argues that many ancient sites, including the pyramids, the Nazca lines and Stonehenge are evidence of extraterrestrial influence. And this is a kind of internet theory that you see on YouTube all the time. You can see the echoes of it still in nefarious streaming platform documentaries today, naming no names. Do you know what I find funny about this? You know the way you and I are a bit like, oh, alien stuff, we have to do alien stuff sometimes, like we had to do alien abduction

stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah. We'll be thoroughly embarrassed when the aliens come down to earth and it's all real. There's probably some kind of life beyond earth, right? I'm very open to that. Of course there is. But what I get is the, what we often get is this kind of feedback going, I can't believe you're so closed off to these things. Babe, we're allowed to be closed off. You don't have to be. Like you can have your green alien made stonehenge theory and knock yourself out and you talk about that on your podcast. But on this podcast,

we don't necessarily believe that has happened. So I'm going to rule that one out. Okay. Next fact, please. Number eight is, god, we're getting through these. Okay. Um, it's a Dahlia exhibition venue as in like the flower. Yeah. Dahlia, Dahlia. How would you pronounce it? I would have said like the black Dahlia. That's how I say that, but I don't know if that's the same. Okay. So I would have said Dahlia. Maybe that's a northern thing. Okay. Either way, a flower.

So this is a flower that's native to Mexico, but it first arrived in Britain in the best century of all, the 18th century. Only just so. If you were a year, I would say that you might be 1798. Oh my God. Yeah, I obsessed with 1790s. Obsessed. That rings true to me. Anyway, sorry, go on. The best and worst decade. Everything happens. Anyway. Okay. So these are very pretty flowers, and they're very popular today, but they became

really fashionable in the first half of the 19th century. And this is so random. There used to be competitions and exhibitions of who could grow the best flower and the Salisbury Plain Dailier Society held its first show in Sidestonehenge in 1842 and the crowd, by the way, was almost 10,000 people. That's wild. In another 5,000 years time, there will be historians on whatever the podcast thing is then and they'll be going, actually, it's really weird because we don't know for sure but like it looks like it might have been a flower center or garden center in the mid-19th century.

It was a garden center. And people were like, what? That doesn't make any sense. But yes, it was. If this recording still exists in 5,000 years time, yes, it was essentially a garden center. Yeah, yeah. But this still exists today. This is still tradition. Stonehenge still daily is being displayed at Stonehenge. There's a picture that I'm looking at currently of two, what are they, sort of slightly bigger than life size, actually quite creepy women. They're not real. They're like weird models. They've got some 19th century dresses and bonnets on, but they're all made of flowers and they're standing in front of Stonehenge.

Right. So they're not like planted there. They're just transported into us. Yeah. I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's weird. Underwhelming. Right. Number nine, a Victorian historian wants to put a time capsule underneath it. That doesn't seem that weird to me. I'm obsessed with this. This is okay. So I didn't know this until we started doing the research for this episode. Obsessed. Obsessed. So in 1877, the historian Frederick Harrison decides that basically there

should be a time capsule under Stonehenge. He writes an article called A Pompeii for the 29th century. So he specifically wants it to be dug up in the 29th century. He kind of thinks that human sort of mass extinction is going to occur in the future and who's to say that he was wrong. But this isn't like, you know when you're little and you did like a school time capsule to do that and you have to put in like a newspaper and like a chocolate bar or whatever, like things, little objects.

This is not that. This is the size of a museum basically, but under the stones. So here's a list of the things that he wants to put into it. Miniature models of warships and trains. Okay, grace. Women, women's fashion. A guide to Cockney. Okay.

Which will be really useful in the 29th century. It was? A phonograph recording of opera, fair enough. And that smacks of what's the recording that was sent up to space. That's a little bit like that, isn't it? He's also really worried that lots of different species are going to become extinct by the 29th century. So he also wants to bury, and presumably kill them bury, examples of foxes, elephants, buffalo and a rhino.

Okay, yeah, I mean, I can see the need for some kind of, not the need, but I can see the desire to put some kind of time capsule under there just for the crack and just to memorial like I buried a time capsule in my granny's, well, what was my granny's garden somewhere. So there's, I can't even remember what's in there. That's there. And so like, I can see that, but like, I didn't realise it was going to be museum size. That seems a little excessive. Can you imagine the stones just sort of collapsing in on themselves because you've undermined the site so badly and destroyed all the archaeology. Yeah.

Hilarious. But again, it speaks to the perceived importance of Stonehenge, that it's such an important site that this idea would survive till the 29th century. And that it can be, it's a kind of mecca that you bring, it's a Noah's Ark, you bring all these things to it to be preserved there because surely Stonehenge will still be important. So yeah, I could write a whole book on this guy. Number 10, hippies fought the police over it. I would say this is true, right? Okay, so this is a shout out to my dad who told me this. Absolutely hilarious.

So the illegal Stonehenge Free Festival was held at Stonehenge every June between 1974 and 1984, so a 10 year period. And it kind of culminated around the summer solstice. In 1984, the last year, 30,000 people came. I don't know how that measures up to the solstice now. There definitely weren't, I mean, there were several thousand at the winter one, but I think the summer one is like on a whole other scale. Even for me, that's too many people.

Like, that's my limit. I'll do the winter one and nothing else. 30,000 though. That's too many people. Like five is too many people for me. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. I agree. So this was basically, there was loads of different kind of counterculture groups who

came. There were loads of artists who came, like Dexys Midnight Runners were there, Benjamin Zephaniah was there. There was a lot of drug use. I'm not for a second suggesting the people I've just listed were using the drugs, but there was a lot of drug use going on. They were all kind of, in terms of the public discourse, they were all just termed hippies, even though they were from all these different backgrounds

and groups. One festival goer described it as being in a medieval nightmare. It's kind of wild. There's this really iconic photo that I've included in our notes here. It's this kind of like gloriously, gorgeously hazy photo of this festival. And there's some people very controversially climbing up and sat on some of the big sarsen stones and those lintel stones that go over the top of them. And look at those druidy people as well, Maddie, like the people in that Churchill picture. Absolutely. Yeah, you've got the sort of white outfits of the druids, you've got people sat on each other's shoulders, like it looks like a wild time. In 1985 though, the police decided

they'd had enough of this illegal festival, they didn't want people near the stones. It was not on, there was too many drugs being done, it was a bit of chaos. It needs to be stopped. So 1300 police go down to Stonehenge with riot shields and truncheons and then what ensues is a conflict between the so-called hippies and the police. And it becomes known as the Battle of the Beanfield. Right. I think this place, it has the most confused identity that has been Beanfields, Dahlia's, what else have we had? We've had singing stones. We've had Tess asleep in the middle of it for the crack.

We've had like, it just is fascinating because it fulfills so many functions for so many people. But do you know what I'm calling back to actually, as we come kind of to the end of this discussion? And I don't know why, because when we were talking about it at first, I was like, okay, pillars in the ground, grace, whatever. After all of this, that's what I'm being drawn back to in my head is those stakes in the ground of the original wooden structure. And maybe there's something in it now that we've done the whole journey through these two episodes, but actually I'm seeing the real value in the concrete proof of the history, as opposed to maybe some of the mythology that's been layered

on top of it, which I can find frustrating and find a bit like, oh yeah, could have been this, could have been that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's something very appealing to me now about those wooden stakes in the ground, something quite grounding, earthy, real that I'm calling back to. So that's what I think I'm going to take from this. And then they become burial chambers, which of course, you know, I'm very interested in the practices of death and the history of death. So that's what I think I'm going to take from these two episodes, Maddie. So I may not be a Stonehenge convert, but I'm certainly...

You're halfway there. Something is, yeah, something's quite intriguing about that actual history. I think that's a thing. I will take that. I will take that as a victory. If you have enjoyed this episode of After Dark, get in touch with us. Let us know, let us know topics that you want us to cover. Any more prehistoric monuments for Anthony to get het up about, please send them my way. You can email us at afterdoc at historyhit.com.