Oh What A Time... - [BONUS EP] #141 Stonehenge

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

We're on our annual two-week summer break, but don't worry! Please enjoy these subscriber episodes from last summer while we're away!From September 2025, this is..Following Chris’ trip to Stonehenge over the summer we thought the time was right to finally dedicate a whole episode to those neolithic stones that have blown minds for thousands of years.And if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime. And welcome to Oh, what a time, the history podcast that asks. Was a time when there was literally nothing to do in the evening better than now? Now let me explain why, because every evening now I find myself awake at half 11 or midnight watching some true crime program I don't need to be watching. And then the next morning, I'm always knackered. Back in the day, medieval people, they'd look at the fire for a bit. They finish their turnips.

It gets about nine. They go, all right, it's probably time for bed now, isn't it? Because there's nothing to do. And then they'd be refreshed the next morning before their awful job. Do you know what they did do? They did a lot of shagging, I think. Really? What's where they wanted 18 kids?

I just thought that was a contraception issue. I assume they had sex 18 times. The world's oldest form of entertainment. Yeah, I was in, I was at St Faghan's Museum of Welsh Life. Yeah. And I was in like a farmer's cottage, as it would have been in about, And you were shagging away. And you said, this is what they did, this is historically accurate.

You can't track me out. As groups of tourists walked past, filed past me in dumbfounded silence. You yelled, this is history. This is history, I said. Like Noel Gallagher at Nebworth. This is history. This is history. I thought it was saying faggans.

Anyway, so we were in this farmer's cottage in about 1719. It's done up like a 1790. But the windows are small and it was all candlelit. And we were there in the winter, it was really dark. Okay. So if you were literate and you almost certainly weren't, you wouldn't have been able to read after about 4pm in the winter. Yeah, so that's off the table.

Obviously there's no radio, there's no podcasts. Board games were shit. There was no Amazon. So what do you do? It's the lukewarm pleasures of the flesh, isn't it? Is that why the windows were tiny? It wasn't to keep the heating so people couldn't see you when you were shagging? Yeah, yeah.

So what else did you do? You'd have a think about. the Bible probably. Yeah. You put that away and then you'd put that away. Put that away. A beast with two backs.

Do you know, I think I've spoken about this before but when you watch Wolf Hall, he, that was, the director made the decision to light it using only methods that you could light a room in winter.

Really? In the 1600s. So you really get a sense of how dark and cold England would have been. Yeah. In that time period. And you do like,

the evening scenes. Sometimes you'll see Mark Rylance just sat in front of the fire like with a knife and an apple just picking off little bits of apple like that is it there's not a lot to do. Mark Rylens what, aka flop from Bing.

Flop from Bing plays Thomas Cromwell. No, I did not know that. Yes, very well. You could at least try and do that trick where you skin the apple and you keep the skin in one long, never-ending band. That's the sort of thing you could do to pass some of the time before shagging, I guess.

No, I just got straight into the shagging. Straight in. My point is essentially, though, the amount of time I waste late at night now because there is so much you can do, there's so much content and stuff you can just scroll through or stare at, I end up staying up so much later than I need to. And a pressure to watch it all. Exactly. Because people say, oh, have you seen this?

It's a great Netflix series about what it was like working at a local. newspaper in the 60s in San Francisco. You're like, no, I haven't watched. Oh, you've got to. It's the best thing ever. You must. Sorry, I entertain myself 1790s style. Have you watched every episode of Neighbors?

I'm trying. I'm trying to get through them. Yeah, I'm trying my best. Does it count that I watch a lot of them twice in the 90s? So what's Izzy's point of view? Issy's point of view that there is too much stuff to keep you entertained nowadays? Yeah, and it's too overwhelming and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, we're not being sociable enough.

We're not seeing each other. All that kind of stuff. We're all stuck behind screens. I've spoken to ACaster quite a lot about this, about the idea of choice paralysis when you're sat in front of a telly, and there's just so many things to watch and you don't know what to watch.

And I think that's a real problem for kids nowadays, especially. Yeah, yeah, totally. Previously, it would be four o'clock. You'd sit in front of the telly, you'd watch whatever was on. See BBC then, or whatever. Well, you had two choices. It was BBC or ITD. Exactly.

Now, children have four million different things they can watch. And I think it's towards a stress. There's too much joy. Bring back the simpler times. Well, on that note, on Saturday night, I had three hours to myself. And I thought, what am I going to watch? What's going to be this night? I opened a bottle of wine and I was like, this is going to be great. And what I did is I watched 10 minutes of a Carl Pilkinton documentary

I'd seen about 50 times before in Sky One. I decided this isn't good enough. And then I put on a Netflix documentary about the Vietnam War, 10 minutes of that was like, it's not good enough. Then I watched the Naked Gun 33 and a third for the millionth time. And I've got 10 minutes in and I've seen this before. Next thing I know it's 11pm, it's time for bed. I've absolutely fucked me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is such an annoying feeling. That's a big failure. I'd like to put into that, an equally annoying thing is it being about 40 minutes into a film and thinking, this is rubbish. But now I have a choice. If I opt out now, I've wasted 40 minutes.

At least if I stick in there, I can say, well, I've watched that film and I can have a conclusive opinion about it. Yeah, do I try and get his Z to switch to match of the day? Even though I've already watched the highlights on the toilet and short form earlier. Yeah, can I, in all honesty, sell her Everton versus Baudela? No, well, I'm genuinely intrigued, listeners. Do you think a simpler time with candlelight, small windows, and shag until dusk? Or shag until more, more time.

Tell you what is helpful, who's better. Weather apps. Okay. Did the school run this morning. It is half a mile. It takes the kids about 10 or 12 minutes to walk to school. The skies look glorious.

Why did I have an umbrella? Because I checked my weather up and I knew that there was heavy rain in six minutes. I looked crazy opening the door. Everyone else in the streets like, oh my God, who's he think he is? Mary Poppins? Yeah. Have you got acue weather on you? your phone, because I have, enjoy.

Cut two, L, 50 minutes away, genuinely at that same time, I was getting off the school bus with my two children and I, of course, hadn't checked the weather app, and I got soaked through on a little walk to school. So this is the split between us and why you're a better man than me. But you know, like, has forecasting removed some of the mystery and allure of life? You know, when you know it's going to rain in six minutes, is it not? better to wake up in the morning walk out and you're just, every day you're rolling the dice, you've got to be prepared for all weathers, you never know what's coming. No, because being prepared for all weathers is incredibly irritating.

Yeah. Because then you end up at a theme park with a big coat you don't need. And umbrellas you don't need and snow shoes you don't need. Or Bermuda shorts you don't need. It's certainly on the theme park thing. The people that I, we went to my kids of Chessington, about two months ago. The idea of carrying big things around,

the people that always are the people who really early in the day have won one of those massive teddy at the basketball thing. And now have to carry around a huge Super Mario or whatever happens to be, a massive bear for like 10 hours. I'm sure it seems great that you've won that, but it's half 10 and you're not leaving this place till 5.

And you're carrying around a teddy bear that's the size of you. And they won't play with it afterwards. Absolutely. And you can't put it down somewhere. No, that's an aspect of, I would say, certainly modern consumerism and modern life that really annoys me, but that's particularly prevalent

if you've got very young children is the amount of one-time crap they end up with. So you know, like, magazines you buy. Oh, the toys in magazines. The shit stuff on the front. Yeah. That is the bottom of the toy food chain.

So bad. And that is the krill of toys. After they're taking that out of the packet, I'm looking at thinking, within a fortnight, I will have been to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That will be in the recycling within a fortnight.

Also, it's always plastic and so thin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they go, oh, this is, I've always wanted one of these. And I'm like, look, you often. It's another pair of fake binoculars with a different sticker on it. It's always the same. It's clearly sore.

from the same factory as well and they just change the stickers it'll be poor patrol pepper whatever happens to be it's the same object with a different sticker on it one of those things it's like a sort of basket

and there's a button that you press and then it shoots a baller path for inch you haven't always one of those I sit my kids on and I say you're a liar you're lying to me and we don't lie in this house stop lying

a game which looks a bit like a game boy which pushes water and you have to make little hoops go over a two little sticks. You know that one? Absolutely. The worst game in the world. It's so frustrating.

And it's never sealed, so it's dripping on your lap as you play it as well. The edges are always slightly open, which means you're just wetting your knees as you play this god-awful game. Yeah. And it would be, talk about sort of short-term painful long-term game. Kirstar must you just ban it. He should introduce a crap bazaar. and the Tsar just like, yeah, that's a piece of shit

that's also crap, that's fucking rubbish that's a disposable piece of shit and it all gets banned Well, you know how there's a big drive to get rid of like fast-fashioned and single-use plastics Yeah, those magazines are able to turn out those toys Like fight like all the time We're sort of, we're at cross purposes here I think

I reckon the, oh you know, they're talking about plastic pollution in the oceans They're full of these crap from Barbie magazines Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there'll be an article on the BBC News website, and he'll be like, this is Sylvia, and she's made her own jumpers for 40 years because she's so anti-fast fashion, and bit by bit, she's helping save the planet.

And then you're like, Sylvia's a grandmother, and her children fucking love those shit magazines, and they are bit by bit, destroying the planet. My children, now, I don't know if this is too much, my children get three pounds a week pocket money. Okay, that's what they get, okay? And I always... Little Lord Fontenroy.

Each time I say to them, why do you try and save up your money and in a few weeks you can get something you actually want? But every week they're like, no, I want that magazine with the crap on the front, which is yours you're going to step on it to in the morning, Dad, and your socks and it's going to really hurt. That's what I want yet again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my daughter's a little bit older than you. She goes to guides, and she goes to guides, and their latest project is Grow Your Pound. Oh. So they've only given a pound They have to invest it in something So they may if they buy

I don't know you could buy If you can get hold of paper and a pen for a quid Then you make drawings and then you sell the drawings at a profit And then you reinvest that money So basically they turned it to many like industrialists Yeah Like the apprentice Yeah yeah it's exactly that

She's bought a very small amount of crystal there She then sold for seven quid It's the apprentice for the under 11s. Yeah. But it is very hard to buy raw materials for a pound. Yeah, absolutely. Like even in the pound shop, even the pound shop, there's a lot of, you know, more stuff is over a quid.

Yeah. Well, the point is, was the past simpler, was the past calmer, a better time to be alive? And what is deeper in the past than Stone End, J. Skull? Oh, that's what we're talking about today. Yeah. What in Britain represents that calm, spiritual past more than Stonehenge.

And why have I mentioned that, Chris? Why have I brought that up? Because this week's subscriber episode is Stonehenge. It's a Stonehenge special. I went to Stonehenge for the first time in the summer, and we thought we'd dedicate this whole episode to Stonehenge facts, the experience of going to visit Stonehenge. It's come up on this podcast a few times,

but now I can speak about this subject from the perspective of someone who's actually been... An actual henger. Yeah. A henger. Or a stoner. A stoner. There's a stone.

Even better. There were two options and I went for the wrong one. But before I launch into Stonehenge, I mentioned this on a recent episode we did on the main feed. So I went to Stonehenge and I rang my dad from Stonehenge. Well, he rang me. Anyway. And I said, I'm at Stonehenge right now.

My dad said, I went there in the 80s. And he said, you're able to drive right up to the stones. And he reckoned there was no, like, there was no boundary, no barrier. You could walk up amongst the stones, hug the stones. Wow. Yeah. It was just totally lawless. Well, that is true.

I went last January. So I've been there within the last year or so, and I'd last been in 2011, just before they built the new visitor centre. And I parked way closer to Stonehenge than I had done. Yeah. Than I had to in January. And the three of us spent New Year's Eve together.

We were down in Cornwall. And I'd said to my family, I said, we're basically driving past it. Now, it's incredible. My daughter especially is old enough to sort of, you know, understand the majesty of the stones. I said, we're never in this part of England, usually, so we're going to stop at Stonehenge.

It turned into a far more protracted affair than I'd expected, because now you've got to get a bus to the stones. Oh, do you? The car park's massive, and you've got to get a shuttle bus to the stones. And it's a long enough drive of Cornwall to London anyway. But suddenly I was like, right, we're just going to park here. It's a short two-mile walk or shuttle bus via the visitor centre with the queues are absolutely massive to see the stones for five minutes

so we can be awed by the majesty. Then it's just a quick shuttle bus back to the cab. But it's amazing now. It's really incredible. He hasn't got one of those sort of electronic boards on the side of the stones that show you when the next bus is coming, is it? Yeah, it's fully digital. And you can get Wi-Fi.

I actually sent an email from one of the stones. It's incredible. No, I suppose just for the completeness amongst you. I've actually never been. So you can tell me about this experience. I've driven past it on the way to Glastonbury. So the festival, it's really exciting thing for me. For me, it represents a key part of the journey. It's a point we go, oh, we're approaching their festival. But I've never been. You grew up in Wiltshire. Yeah, I know. How do you avoid that? How did you avoid Stonehenge?

It's a good question. Well, you'd have to ask my parents. It's not a place they took me to But I went to Wookie Hole about 15 times Yeah well I would have assumed there was School trips and stuff Never never did that no That's amazing Pre-visitor centre

You couldn't take a bunch of kids It's essentially a bunch of stones It's amazing But without a visitor centre You really you don't know what you're looking at How do you string it out basically Yeah how do you string it out You can't bust a ball down there

Right there's the stones We'll pick you up in five minutes Yeah. And then we went back up. So did you do Wookie Hall as a school trip? We did Wookie Hall. We did Long Leet for overseas. Oh, yeah.

Wookie Hall is a cave system in the West country. Yeah. Long Leet is a safari park and a big state of home. These are the big things you went to. But the key one is Stonehenge for some reason. Not once. Cheddar Gorge? Went to Cheddar Gorge.

Yes, did Cheddar Gorge? And you missed out on Stonehenge. Missed out on Stonehenge. But that's because I knew if I didn't go, it would be all the more exciting when I eventually recorded a podcast about it and found for my friends firsthand what the experience is like. So I'm glad I waited. Yeah. So that's what today's episode is about. Before we crack into the Stone Fund, should we do a little bit of correspondence? Should we do that first? Oh yes. Oh yes. Our email today is from James in Southampton. The email title is Pottie about potty.

It says, hello all. I'm loving the recent series of Alexander the Great. It's really helping me unwind from finishing my master's dissertation. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. If that's a history dissertation, yes. That's an M.A. in history. I'd love to know what your diss was on. He has not specified.

But, James, if you're listening, do get in contact with that information. Talking about... And if this podcast is mentioned in that dis, then surely they will get a reference in there. Absolutely. Citation. And we get the letters after our name, don't we, surely?

That must have happened in the history of this podcast that someone has cited it. Yes. Do let us know. Hello at www.com. And then we'll end up getting all B's services to wisdom. So a dissertation is, is that, that's an MA, is it basically? Is that what you're, it's probably an MA, is it possibly?

Well, you do a, you do a, you can do a dissertation at undergrad level if you choose. It could be, it could be Aons. Well, he said he was doing an M.A. Oh, did he say that? To an M.A. dissertation is 20,000 words. Oh, yes, Marta. There we are. That's good. So, in that case, this is oh, what a time, MA. Is that right? Is that what we write our full title out now?

Yeah, yeah. Could be MSC. We don't know what is MAs in. Scal, if you wouldn't mind changing the holding image on the podcast app. That would be great. Talking about Alexander, ancient Greece and potty, your conversation about potty training before Pampers reminded me of my trip to the ancient Agora in Athens. One of the artefacts found at the site, this is unbelievable this,

was a child's potty believed to be dated to the 5th or 6th century BCE. Isn't that incredible? If I remember correctly, at the site, they also found items such as perfume bottles, clay, ballot type tablets, as used in elections. And it's crazy to think that ancient Greek daily life would have represented elements of our life, or at least not too dissimilar to what we experience now, especially when considering, as Tom pointed out, our ancestors would have been still living in houses made of literal shit. Thank you so much for the podcast. Keep up the great work. I know it's a welcome relief as well as incredibly interesting for many of us. Kind regards, James Southampton.

But that's amazing. So that is, back in the fifth or sixth century, they had potty's in ancient Greece. That's blown my mind. But what was it made of? Well, I guess stone, I imagine. Stone? Yeah.

Because we bought our potty, I think, from like mother care, or early learning centre. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, it gets sort of passed down. It might get given to another family. But they're quite grim because of what they are. You're not going to just chuck a stone potty away, are you? No.

I've always got images of at the moment, When you realize your child desperately needs to loo is upstairs in the house and you're having to run upstairs with a stone potty. How heavy that is. Half a metric ton of potty. At least with a plastic one, it's like you can run with one hand and try and get the Justin time. If you're a stone mason's apprentice,

that's a good thing to get cracking on, though then. The potty. Yeah. If you've got a little lump of stone, can you work a potty up or flog that for a tenor? Bosch, down the tavern we go. You could knock that. off in a matter of, in a morning, I think.

What a potty? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How would you do that then? I suppose it's just a block and then you're just scooping a semicircle or a... Sure. Yeah, it doesn't have... A semicircle or is it?

What's it for? It's for a kid to learn to shit in? I don't know what I imagine, to be honest. I imagine that children were sort of, especially in a hot country, just walking around without a nappy. and when they felt the need, maybe they'd be taken out to, you know, the dusty ground outside. I don't know. And that would be basically where they do their business. Or a river or a stream.

Humans have always tried to avoid business being in the home. Yeah. So I think, yeah. Well, there you go. So that's amazing. That's a fifth or sixth century potty, the ancient Greeks. Thank you, James, for letting us know that. Good luck with the rest of your studies.

I hope they all go well. How do they know it was a potty? How do they not know it was a sort of salad bowl? It was still covered in shit. Yeah, what's this? Oh, they probably made cakes in that. It was a half a packet of ancient wet wipes. Just to the left of it, I guess.

And 15 grains of sweet corn. So, thank you, Jane, for sending that in. If anyone else has anything they want to send to us, be it potty related or whatever, to be honest, you can get in contact with the show. Here's how. All right, you horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show.

You can email us at hello at ohwattatime.com and you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Oh, What a Time, pod. Now, clear off. So we've just discussed there, what fifth or sixth century BCE? Which is nothing. It is nothing. It is a blip on the length of time Stonehenge has been around. This is one thing about Stonehenge that it really, it's mind-boggling. We know when people talk about the scale of the universe and things like that.

Numbers so big it doesn't make sense. Stonehenge has been around since 8,500 BCE. There has been people in that area and there's archaeological evidence that shows pits, post holes and wooden structures dating back to that time. 8,500 BCE where Mesolithic hunter gatherers were active in that area. 8,500 BCE? Yeah. Wow.

Also, these wooden posts that were dated back to then, even then they can tell they are in alignment with the sunrise. Wow. Which is obviously a foreshadowing of the site's latest significance. It's bonkers, isn't it? Yeah. Are those wooden posts still in some decent nick? No, I guess they were underground.

They've probably dug them up and found them and DNA tested them. Okay, yeah. Because we've got a, we've got a rake which we bought a year ago and left in the garden and has got wet this summer and is already falling to pieces. And that's been like 280. What is the craftsmanship of these people? Oh, the intramosolithic people. They really did build stuff to lust.

8,500 years BCE, their posts are still going strong. You can't fault that. Don't they, this is something I vaguely remember, but you know, is it Leif Erikson, who they know managed to get to North America? They found his settlement that he built, and they were able to decarbonate the wood, and they know exactly when he got to America, and they even know what season it was, based on the wood. I'm pretty sure that's right. That's amazing.

Let me go to safer ground, which is Stonehenge. So if we go back to 3,100 BCE, so back then it wasn't a stone circle. There's like this earthwork enclosure and these Neolithic builders, what was it like a large circular ditch in a bank with two entrances. And inside the ditch they placed Orbury holes,

which is like 56 pits. But this is the thing about Stonehenge. They don't know why they built the pits. Like these 56 pits surrounding what would later become Stonehenge. Were they astronomical markers? No one knows. Interesting.

So when I got there, what do you think was the first, there was actually, so now it's all roped off around Stonehenge, but they're dotted around like Stonehenge helpers or experts. And I went up to one. What would you guess would be the first question I would ask? What's the West Hamps School? I can't get any signal. So you're asking when you first approach someone working at Stonehenge. Yeah, I was like, we're looking at Stonehenge. I was like, I've got to ask, I've got to ask.

Is it, has genuinely, has anyone ever used those as goalposts? And that's not a lie. Because I know there's three of them which do look like a goal. And I've always wondered that maybe someone's had a kick him out there. Oh, no. Was it that? No. I went up to this kindly gentleman and I said,

tell me about the human sacrifices here. And he said, there's no evidence of that. Oh, really? But you know how there's like, there's like an altar, there's like a ceremony. like a stone right at the centre that they know. It was like the heart of this stonehenge. And I was like, well, surely they're putting people there and sacrificing them to the gods. But he was like, no, no, no. There's no evidence that it functioned like that.

There is a blood stone or like a red stone that's just off from the centre of the site. But the Victorians named it. I think it was called the Bloodstone. The Victorians named it that. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So that no one's like, this site had a purpose like 3,100 BC. There was pits dug and there's earthworks there, but tantalizingly we don't know what it actually served us. But something we do know, which is that Stonehenge functioned as a cremation cemetery

in its earliest centuries. So 3,000 to 2,500 BCE, there was definitely cremations happening there. Over 150 human remains have been found, making it one of the largest Neolithic cemeteries in Britain. And one of the things you can do there, which I didn't appreciate until I went, is that there's signs that says that they know

that important people were buried here and actually as you look around the kind of horizon you can see all these big mounds which are burial mounds. Right. Oh. So they suspect that a lot of these people who were buried there, these huge mounds, obviously it was important to get buried there but these

people buried in these big mounds were elite kind of members of society. Yeah, yeah. Who were being selected for this elite burial practice. But when you get to Stonehenger, you look around there's all these signs, you can see all these mounds that are there because someone very important, some very important

neolithic man is buried underneath them or won't. I found it absolutely enthralling. Did you? Yeah. Genuinely magical. It had a very emotional impact on me. Because as they are now, it's been there for about 5,000 years. So it's 3,000 years older than Christ. Yeah. That's how old it is.

And it's not unique. There are standing stones in other parts of the UK. Like there's, I can think of two. in North Pembrokeshire. Yeah. Which are sort of similar, much smaller scale, but sort of thing

from a similar sort of time, Pentry Vans is the most famous one, very near where I got married, in fact. And again, because it's, when there's one in Pembrokeshire, it's just on a housing estate.

Right. It's like to someone's gotten. But like, it's the fact that you could have, there's evidence of your existence 5,000 years later. Yeah. And people are still turning up

to see something that you made or, you know, that you were part of making. Because obviously it must have taken, I don't know how long it took, but it must have taken so long to create. Because some of the stones were coming from Scotland, I think, some of the stones were coming from Pembrokeshire. And it's in Wiltshire.

Yeah. I mean, these are big distances. But here's the thing that will blow your mind. Like, what I've just discussed is 6,000 years of history at Stonehenge. And at this point, we get to 2,500 BCE. So there's 6,000 years of history. history, before we get to the Stonehenge we recognise today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The first stones arrive in 2,500 BC and these are the smaller blue stones which kind of sit in the inner circle. These ones weigh two to four tons each. Wow. And again, that's enough to be getting along with, isn't it? That's a minute. It's still pretty impressive.

And the smaller blue stones, they're the ones brought in from South West Wales. Is it the Preseli Hills? Is that the right production? Yeah, yeah. Prisely Mountains in Pembrokelly Mountains in Pembrokeme, very near where I grew up. 150 miles away. Wow.

So they're not clear on how the stones were moved there and the Sarsen stones, which are the bigger ones, the iconic ones from Stonehenge. They've got actually in the visitor centre a setup which demonstrates how they think the stones were carried. And the method is like loads of logs. That's what I'd have guessed. That's what I was thinking about this.

No, genuinely, when you mentioned we were going to do this as an episode, I was thinking about it and I assumed it must be, it has to be that, because it's prior to the, invention of the wheel, but you need the movement essentially of a wheel, ostensibly, to make this possible. So it has to be surely trees that are being cut down and then they're rolling as a group, basically, with the thing on top. And I'm imagining someone in the back is moving forward and then putting new logs in front, so it's constantly on a road, essentially. Tom, you could be a neolithic man. You've cracked it. Thank you very much. But do you know which animal? And this is a, I think

this is relatively new news. Do you know what animals they used? I think I read this in the paper, but it was cattle, wasn't it? Cattle. To pull them? They think they use cattle to pull the stones. Wow. How many? They don't know. I think they found a, they found a cow at the site of stone henge that had been buried in it had like traces of lead in its mouth and they think that the lead was used to kind of as a, within its like stirrups essentially to put like pull the stones. Oh, dearie me. Imagine though. Seeing the blue stones in Pembrose. I'm thinking, God, these are great. I love these.

They're really, they're really, they'd be suitable, actually, for a sort of monument. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, why don't we build the monument here in South West Wales? No, no, no, no, no.

No, I don't think so. Do you know what I think would be better? Wiltshire. What is that? It's what? Listen, it's a hopsky binjew. It's 150 miles tops. Okay.

Steve, is that near that, isn't that what, that girl you like? She lives in, is that what this is about? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, God, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, she, do she, and, and, yeah, it's well, well, yeah, that's, that's, that's, no, isn't she really into massive stones, is she, I don't, yeah, she, all right, she quite likes big stones and cattle, and, yeah, it's fine, just to forget about it. Also, imagine being one of the communities who aren't involved in this, who are just, oh, the way that as they're passing, you're looking out of your little house or whatever you've made, whatever you're

smoking of fag, just after breakfast what they do is? It's a cow pulling a 50 ton rock. You're wasting your time, lads! Look at your fag and thinking, what's in this? Oh dear. So they think it's about a hundred years after the

bluestones arrive that you get the main circle construction. And this is when you get the iconic Stonehenge look. begin to take shape. So they have a horseshoe of five massive trialathons, which is the two upright stones with one across the top. I mean, even that,

the big stone on top of the other two stones, like a basic domino setup, but it's mind-boggling that they're doing this. How is a cow done that? That's quite impressive. That's a bit of those down. Yeah, with its hooves. And this is where you get the circle of the sarsen stones, which is the

big stones. They're local. They're only 20 miles away. Pathetic, nothing. So do they have any idea how the big stones got on top of the other ones? These are the ones that I was referring to when I said about the ones in the shape of a goal. How do they think those ones got on top? Well, they just don't know. They don't know.

But the diagram I saw in the museum was like a bit of a kind of like crane construction, wooden crane construction where there's loads of ropes and they're like a bunch of cows and people at one end pulling the stone up. They're incredible. But they've got a special like stone made. They've been basically, I don't know if this is inventing. them but there's like little knobbs on top

of the upright stones and then hollows on the ones that lay across so they kind of fit well Wow! Oh really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So... Like Lego? Yeah, there's like a bit of a Lego thing going on with these stones which is why they're able to stay on top. And those big stones, the Sarsim ones,

they can weigh over 25 tonnes. There must have been accidents on deaths. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there must have been times when that crane thing collapsed and the storm fell on. people. This is pretty health and safety, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah. I imagine they're updating that, like you get at the tip, that sign that says, it's been zero days since our last accident. It's been zero minutes.

Yeah. Well, that's one thing I was thinking, when they're trawling these stones from 120 miles away, like, it's going to happen that one of those logs is going to roll over someone's foot.

Something like that. There is no A&E. There is nothing. They're like, well, we're still going on to Wiltshire. Good luck. And it is also all so heavy that if it happens, it's going to be bad. And it's going to be a long, protracted affair. The job you really want is sat on top of the stone, checking you're going in the right direction.

That's what you want, riding the stone. Foreman. The guy with a clipboard, a quarter of a mile away from the action. Yeah. It's genuinely mind-boggling, isn't it? So this period, which is 2,400 BC, this is when they beat the Stonehenges astronomically aligned. So famously, in the summer solstice,

the sunrise is perfectly above the heel stone. Much of getting that wrong. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously, that's the same as the winter solstice sunset. So it's like, they think it's, well, I think it's a good assumption. There was a site used to mark the rebirth of the sun in the darkest time of the year.

But, you know, I do very little DIY, but I have put shells up, and I've looked back, and they're wonky. Now, imagine you've gone to the effort of lifting a 25-10 sarsen storm so that it's perfectly in line with the summer solstice, so you've got one day of the year to check. And you're like, okay, we need to start again. And then we check again one year from now. It doesn't bear thinking about it.

So this is another thing that struck me. It was between 2,300 and 1,600 BCE, the stones are getting rearranged multiple times over these centuries. Really? So deep in prehistory. Yeah, they're getting moved around a lot. And we're pretty sure by 1600 BCE that Stonehenge is no longer in active use.

Okay. But also one thing to bear in mind is like there's lots of Stonehenge, I wouldn't have their tribute tribute acts but there's loads of stone circles there's Durrington walls a massive Neolithic settlement and Henge

Wood Henge famously which is near Stonehenge and the Avenue which is a ceremonial pathway linking stonehenge to the river Avon so who built it with Neolithic farming communities is the guess long before the Celts

Romans or Anglo-Saxons and there's actually DNA evidence that suggests they were descended from Anatolian farmers who migrated west through Europe and mixed with local hunter-gatherers. Okay.

The thing that Blue might, like, the thing that I was really interested in about Stonehenge was like, what did we think it was? What did people, you know, in like, I don't know, the Roman times, the Middle Ages, what did they think it was? So in the Middle Ages, no one really knew who built Stonehenge.

So myths essentially filled the gap. And one popular theory was that Merlin himself brought the stones from Ireland using magic. Love that. And in the Middle Ages, people thought it was a kind of Roman invention or maybe a Roman temple or a battlefield memorial. But in 1620, an architect

called Inigo Jones studied Stonehenge and he said, oh, it's definitely Roman. And that became the kind of the story in the 1600s and the 1700s and the 1800s and 1900s. They began excavating it, but it wasn't really until

the 20th century that major digs and reconstructions took place, including re-erecting fallen stones and cementing bases, something visitors don't realize today. Interesting. But those bases have been reconcreted over. Yeah, yeah. Because a lot of the big Sarsen stones had fallen, in time.

And they basically gave it a refurb. Right. In the Victorian Union and again in the 60s, I think. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So they've actually cemented some of the bases and re-erected some of the stones that had fallen. How interesting, I did not know that.

Yeah. And obviously now it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's owned by the Crown, but managed by English Heritage. And every year you get your pagans, your druids, your spiritual tourists coming for the solstice events. You're West Ham fans. Well, it didn't become a world heritage site until 1986. Because we've joked about there's a lot. You know, like the New Age travellers and hippies and ravers used to be able to touch the stones.

They'd have raves there on some of solstice days. I get the impression that in the last 30 years or so, we've kind of realised how amazing it is. and taking it a bit for granted until this point. Yeah. Did you go to the gift shop afterwards? Because I always find that sort of stuff fascinating with these ancient world heritage heights, how at the end there's a shop selling you badges,

t-shirts. I always think what are they going to try and mark it off the back of this? For extra money, I find that fascinating. They did have a big foam stone, Henge. Like one of the stones on top was a huge Yeah, like a big foam henge.

Yeah. They had Stonehenge fudge, Stonehenge ale. Yeah. I actually bought, when I was chatting to the guides around the place that are just badgering them

with questions, they all kept referencing a pop-up Stonehenge book. They all said, like, this is the best for demonstrating what Stonehenge would have looked like. So they all had this book

that you open it up and I actually bought one of those and put downstairs. They've also got things like me that was made to the sort of recipe that they think people were drinking it, you know, 3,000 years ago and that kind of stuff from what I remember. I found, I listen, I love Stone Age and I would visit it once a week if I could.

I found absolutely magical. But I found the food on offer in the visitor centre to be quite plain. Okay. But was that in keeping with what Neolithic man would have been eating? What pastes? It was like, I thought it might just be berries and sort of. and curd. No, no, it was past season sausage rolls from I remember.

What sort of impact do you think you'd have on your marriage, if you did go to Stonehen once a week? What is he saying after week three of you leaving on a Sunday yet again to go to Stonehener? I mean, you know, the other day I grudgingly accepted that I probably can't do Bristol City away because it's doing the tour. Because I'm on tour with John. If I was also trying to fit in a weekly trip to Stonehenge, It is difficult.

I mean, if I lived in Wiltshire, I reckon I'd go there all the time. Honestly, it's so old. Like if you go to, I don't know, any, any, like, Norman Castle, they're sort of roughly a thousand years old. I passed from Stefan Castle on the train the other day. And yeah, it's amazing, it's a thousand years old.

There's a bit like 10, 80 something, or something like that. But Stonehenge way predates that stuff. Yeah. Thousands of years. Well, Chris mentions, medieval Britons, which to us is a long time ago, looking at it and going, what is this unbelievably ancient thing?

And to my mind, they are, you know, ostensibly, you know, that's so long ago. But even then, it's this feeling of something being deep history, isn't it? But in terms of age, it's the step up from National League North to Champions League. It has to be respected. Like, it is just mad how old it is. Well, I will one day make it. In that case, you've given it the big sell.

I see the error of my childhood, and I am going to make a point of going to Stonehenge, buying a foamhenge and coming back with it and putting it on my mantlepiece. Next time you're back in your sort of hometown, if you've got the car, you should, because it is, it pretext by 3,000 years. It was old by the time he was born.

You can do the Salisbury Cathedral History 1 too. You can go from Stonehenge of Salisbury Cathedral right down the road. There you go. Salisbury Cathedral, as famously visited by for a point, or at least they claimed. Peter Gabriel. No, the Russian spies with the Novicek Coisbane.

Of course, yes. They went to Salisbury's Cathedral to admire its incredible spire. Yeah, they all said the same thing. That's what they went with. Remarkable choice. Oh, well. Well, that was genuinely fascinating,

Chris. I absolutely love that. Fascinating. I will genuinely will. And if listeners, if there's a place, a historical site or a museum that you think we should visit for a future subscriber episode, we're all ears. Do let us know hello at ohwatertime.com. I've got a question for the listeners. What's the oldest thing you've ever seen? Oh, great question, yeah. Wherever you live in the world, what's the oldest thing you visited? Let's find out who's visited the oldest thing. What if we've got listeners in Rome, for instance? Yep.

They'll be able to see lots of things that are sort of two and a half thousand years old, you would think. Yeah. But Stonehenge is another league. It's another league. Fair play to it. Greece. Yeah. Oh, Greek listeners.

But yeah, amazing. But how does Stonehenge compared to, well, it's much older than, you know, the Acropolis and all that sort of stuff? Obviously, it's much, much, much, much older. So what's the ancient Greek things that would become? It's older than the pyramids. Yes, it is. So, I mean, I'm struggling to think of anything which is older. So well done, Stonehenge.

If you can beat that list, there's, do you get in contact. I'd be amazed. If you've been to anything old than the Stonehenge. Then let us know. Thank you for listening. As always, you are our favourite, favourite people. If there's other people you know who you think might enjoy this show and already listen to it, do push them towards being subscribers because you know the benefits you get. You get wonderful episodes like this. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for supporting this show. And we will see you guys very, very soon. Bye. Goodbye. Bye.

Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free plus access to our full archive of bonus content. two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the Oh What a Time group chat. Plus if you become an Oh What a Time All-Timer, myself Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh what a time.