Short History Of... - Stonehenge (Repeat)

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

Older than the pyramids and just as cryptic, the prehistoric British site of Stonehenge has dominated its landscape for thousands of years. But what is Stonehenge? A celestial clock? An ancient computer to predict eclipses? Was it a temple, a cemetery, or a site of execution? And who were the people who lived and died to create this Stone Age masterpiece? This is a Short History of Stonehenge. Written by Jo Furniss. With thanks to Julian Richards, archaeologist, broadcaster and author of the official Stonehenge guidebook. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is a chilly morning in spring around the year 3000 BC on a plain in southern England. A herd of aurochs cattle, each one the height of an adult man, grazes on fresh green shoots. Keeping their distance from the huge horned beasts, a family dressed in animal skins walks in procession across the plain. Their dogs bound through the dewy grass, their goat tugs on its rope, a young child rides on her father's shoulders. Their leader is a grandmother who shields her eyes against the bright sun. who shields her eyes against the bright sun. Her clan live in the vast forest that blankets the land,

and to them this wide open space is unusual and startling. But she can make out their destination on the horizon, a strange white curve on the land, encircling a group of tall, upright posts, like trees without branches or leaves. One of her dogs pricks its ears, alerted by voices on the wind. The other one barks. She calls them back with a whistle. Another strange feature of this place is how far voices can carry. At least, she hopes it is voices and not spirits. When she hears the rhythmic crack of stone hitting stone, she is reassured that the noises

are human. They walk on. The sun is at its zenith as they approach their destination and start to make out the figures of people working ahead. The travelers stop and stare. There are more people than they have ever seen before. Women in the bottom of a deep circular gully are digging with axes made of deer antlers. Men haul baskets of chalk out of the ditch and deposit it to create a ring-shaped ridge. and deposit it to create a ring-shaped ridge.

They are building a henge, a vast circular enclosure raised from the earth. Further inside the bank of chalky earth is a ring of upright timbers set into deep holes to keep them steady. The family pass through a dip in the high bank that makes the entrance to the henge. The grandmother's hand drops to check a leather pouch that hangs from her belt. It is safe.

They have been travelling on foot for three days to get here. It will be her husband's final resting place. The workers down tools and remove their woven hats in sympathy for the funeral procession. Singing starts up inside the timber circle. A woman in luxurious fur shawls emerges from a hut to greet the travelers. Her acolytes offer them mugs of dandelion water, a snack of hazelnuts and smoked meat. The tired family accept the hospitality, and the grandmother presents the goat as a tribute. When the funeral party is refreshed, the grandmother hands to the priestess the leather pouch containing her husband's ashes.

He came here once as a child, and later would thrill his family with memories of that journey. As promised, his wife brought him back, and now their children can tell new stories about the experience. There is chanting, as the ashes are buried in the ground inside the Henge. When the ritual is over, the priestess invites the visitors to stay. It will soon be the vernal equinox, when the day is the same length as the night. They're holding a celebration. While the family set up camp, the toddler who rode on her father's shoulders plays with

a handful of pebbles. The sun dips to the western horizon. The girl piles up small rocks in a ring, the same as the earthwork that surrounds them. Slowly, the sun sets over her little stone circle inside the massive henge. Today, Stonehenge is the most famous prehistoric site in the world. An icon of human endeavour and our connection with the site in the world. An icon of human endeavor and our connection with the earth and the sky. But the image of Stonehenge that we all know today is only a snapshot from its long and enigmatic history. The monument that dominates its landscape was constructed and reconstructed over a

period of one and a half millennia. It had many phases. Even its huge stones have been moved, according to the unfathomable whim of its keepers. Older than the pyramids and just as cryptic, Stonehenge has drawn visitors for thousands of years, from the Romans who built shrines here, to the Victorians who chipped off souvenir chunks of stone, to coachloads of 21st century tourists who take only selfies.

For centuries, historians have tried to solve its greatest mystery. What is Stonehenge? Was it created to be a celestial clock? An astronomical computer for predicting eclipses? Or was it a center of healing, a place of ancestor worship, or a temple to the sun? Who were the people who lived and died to create this prehistoric masterpiece? I'm John Hopkins, and this is a short history of Stonehenge. Around 9,000 years ago, communities of hunter-gatherers live all over the British Isles.

This is the Mesolithic era, which came after the last Ice Age, when Britain is connected by a land bridge to continental Europe. On the grasslands of Salisbury Plain, about 90 miles west of what is now London, one group of early Britons is inspired to erect a monument. They dig pits in the ground and raise three felled tree trunks.

The upright timbers may have resembled Native American totem poles. This is the first known construction close to the site of Stonehenge. Three thousand years later, rising sea levels mean that water separates England from the rest of Europe. Neolithic people now live on Salisbury Plain, and the area has lost none of its charismatic power. One day in 3900 BC, a feast is held on a spot that is now used as a car park for Stonehenge. Two clans from different parts of England come together for a meeting.

The remains of their rubbish dump, known as a midden, show that they feasted on beef and venison. Another 900 years after that social gathering, a community constructs the ditch and bank that encircles Stonehenge today. Inside the earthwork, they dig a ring of deep pits, known as Aubrey holes, which would have held standing objects, perhaps stones, but more likely upright timbers, that have long since rotted away. People travelled long distances to bury the ashes of their dead in this circle,

making the site the largest cemetery in prehistoric Europe. Another 500 years pass. In the dying days of the Neolithic era, people rely on Stone Age tools, but new technology is starting to change and threaten their way of life. It is now that the people of Salisbury Plain begin their most ambitious construction yet. Julian Richards is a freelance archaeologist and educator and the author of the current Stonehenge guidebook, Stonehenge, The Story So Far,

and the amazing pop-up Stonehenge. Stonehenge is unique because no other stone circle has stones that are shaped. I mean, it is a time of monumental scale building all over the place. From Orkney to the Lake District, the Hebrides, and down here in the south of England. It's a period of just bonkers scale, massive construction. And you do wonder, is this the last gasp of this society? The awareness of what's going on on the continent, new ideas, new types of burial, this new thing, metal suddenly appearing. Is it a society that's

saying, we're in decline, let's just build the most amazing, over-the-top structures that we possibly can at this time? Because that's what it appears like. It's almost like failing societies in other parts of the world. When you look at a society that's got terrible economic problems, and what do they do? Oh, we'll build an international conference center. We'll build a 100,000-seater stadium. And you go, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? And it's almost this, let's go out with a bang. But where Stonehenge is concerned, there isn't any new technology that's involved. Because fundamentally, people have been moving big stones around for some time, not over the distances that you have to move them for Stonehenge,

but nobody's been shaping stones on that scale. They've been producing stone axes by chipping and pecking and creating shapes, but not shaping 40-ton blocks of stone. Nobody's done that before. Many of the massive structures built towards the end of the Neolithic era are hinges, an archaeological term for a simple but laborious construction. Earth and rock is dug out of the ground to form a circular ditch. The excavated material is then piled up on the outside to create a bank, also in the shape of a circle or oval. Typically, one or both ends of the earthwork are left flat to allow an entrance

to the henge. The purpose is unclear. Henges don't really function as defensive structures or animal enclosures. Perhaps they're used as a kind of amphitheater, where people can sit up on the bank to watch events going on inside the arena. Certainly, if the aim of Neolithic people was to leave a legacy, then they've succeeded. Even after thousands of years, centuries of ploughing and farming, their henges still mark today's landscape. There are around 100 henges in Britain.

Most are between 20 and 100 meters in diameter. But there are a small number of super-henches. One in Avebury, 20 miles north of Stonehenge, is over 350 meters across, large enough to encircle the modern village. Another is even bigger, lying only two miles northeast of Stonehenge, in a place called Durrington Walls.

a place called Durrington Walls. It is around the year 2500 BC. A woman is sitting on her heels in the doorway of a thatched hut. She pours cow's milk into a clay pot and places it in the embers of a fire. In another pot, the milk has already thickened. She calls to her youngest son, who brings over a bowl. He catches his fingernails in the ridged grooves that decorate the clay so the bowl doesn't slip from his grasp. It is precious. His mother makes her livelihood from trading the cheese she's making. The boy holds the pot, while she uses a cloth to sieve the liquid whey from the curds.

Then she ties the muslin up tight and leaves it to drain. Later, when she unwraps the cloth, it will contain a nutritious, crumbly, soft cheese. Glancing at the sky, she hands the boy a basket and tells him to take lunch to the stonemasons. The boy sets off across the village. People are busy turning meat spits, shelling hazelnuts, drying fish from the river Avon nearby. Some work on stone tools or leather shoes. He dodges pigs and goats, then skips out of the settlement towards the field where the craftsmen are working. A huge stone lies on the ground. Scores of people hunker over it, pounding at the rock with round hammer stones.

It is the biggest stone the boy has ever seen. As long as four men lying down head to toe. And wider than he can stretch out his arms. His older brother is part of the team who will make its sides flat and smooth. Vicious slivers of stone chippings fly through the air. The boy shouts for the workers to stop so he can approach. The boy shouts for the workers to stop so he can approach. They put down their tools, and the boy joins them to sit on the massive rock and share out their lunch of cheese and smoked meat.

One day, he hopes, he will join the crew working on these stones that will catch the sun. Durrington Walls, only two miles from Stonehenge itself, is a settlement where its builders may have lived. Deposits in the middens show that there was plenty of animal protein available. Bones of pigs and cows were thrown away, with the meat still attached, so the people here weren't so short of food that they boiled bones to get every last scrap. But the only way that Neolithic people can consume cow's milk is to turn it into cheese. They have yet to develop the tolerance for lactose that will become common in European populations later.

Bones discarded in the middens also tell a story. Archaeologists find that the livestock eaten here was raised in Wales or the north of England. That means the animals must have been brought here on the hoof so that the meat was fresh. This raises two intriguing possibilities. Either the people who built Stonehenge are part of a complex network of trade that runs the length and breadth of Britain.

Or whole communities are making a pilgrimage together with their livestock to visit or work at Stonehenge. There's always been this tendency, going back for centuries, to sort of ascribe the inspiration and the building of Stonehenge to some outside influence. So we've had Phoenicians, Mycenaeans, you know, people from outer space. But it wasn't. I mean, it was the native British population, the Neolithic population who built this. What are their lives like? Well, we're only just starting to discover it. Recently, we found places where they live and we can see the buildings that they live in. We can get some idea of their diet, even their social organisations. What amazes me is the degree of organisation, a society within which we can't see a real hierarchy, because in

so many societies, you can identify the rich, the powerful, the people who might have influence. They're not there in the Neolithic. We don't see burials of fabulously rich people or people who could be seen as having influence. There must have been people there who were organizing and motivating because you can't build something on the scale of Stonehenge without that. You can't bring together people from quite far-flung parts of the British Isles to actually be involved in this project without that degree of social cohesion and organisation, and yet we can't see them. After Stonehenge is built,

workers abandon the nearby village at Durrington Walls. But 200 years later, a new project starts on the site of the settlement. For some reason, at this later date, thousands more hours are spent constructing a ditch and bank to encircle the village. Some of its houses are even covered over, and well preserved, by the later earthwork. This superhenge, a high ridge of chalk half a kilometer long and almost as wide, would have shone white against the landscape. But why build such a thing two centuries after the main construction of Stonehenge is finished just a short distance away. Archaeologists think, perhaps, it is a memorial to commemorate the efforts of the builders, or maybe an attempt to ensure that the site is never forgotten by future generations.

The sacred site of Stonehenge is ancient even when builders create the huge structure that we see there today. When construction of the stone circle commences around 2500 BC, the henge itself is 500 years old. It already contains a large standing circle of either stones or timber. But once again, that is all about to change. It is possible that the additional stones brought to the site have a prior history. They may be recycled from another sacred place. Perhaps this is why it is worth the effort of bringing them so far. Although the rocks of Stonehenge all look similar to our modern eye, this is because they are weathered to a uniform grey and decorated by lichen. In fact,

there are many types of British stone represented in this circle. Four and a half thousand years ago, when they are freshly cut and polished, the stones are vivid. They have different colors and textures. Some even sparkle with minerals. The circle contains 42 blue stones. Although these are the smaller of the rocks, they are nonetheless substantial, weighing over three and a half tons each, about the same as two cars. These stones are transported 125 miles from the Preseli Hills in West Wales. It takes hundreds of labourers weeks or months to drag these rocks on sledges over land and float them on rafts across water. Why go to all that effort for these particular blue stones when there are rocks available much nearer to the site, which are just as spectacular.

Why you want to build a stone circle in an area where you haven't got stones is a puzzle. That goes back to this whole thing about it being such a special place that you're going to bring stones over that distance, because every other stone circle in the British Isles, they are using local material. The Welsh stones, that again, very intriguing. Clearly, there are links between these two places. Is it an attempt to bring together these two societies in this joint venture? Because clearly Stonehenge is more than just a local or even a sub-regional thing. It's bigger than that. And that, I think, shows in the raw materials that are used. Of course, one of the big debates, which really

still isn't completely resolved, is what came from Wales. Was it building material or was it a dismantled stone circle? Because it would help to explain why you've got a mixture of stones. Because if I was going to go to Preseli to get stones to transport 125 miles away, I know what I'd go and get. I'd go and get spotted dolerite because it's the nicest looking stone. It's a greeny blue colour with nice white spots in it. That's what I'd bring back. But at Stonehenge, you've got that, you've got other dolerites, rhyolites, you've got volcanic ash, which is so soft that it's dissolved above ground. Why are you bringing rubbish stones like that? Unless they are already significant in that they've already been, I suppose, sort of sanctified by being built into a structure. It makes more sense because you're sort of saying, right, we're contributing to this great national thing.

We're part of it. thing. We're part of it. And so therefore in future when ceremonies are carried out there, we can go and say, we were part of this. You've sort of got that sense of ownership. But the sacred Welsh bluestones are dwarfed by the sarsen stones, the largest of which measures 10 meters in length. The sarsens are also transported to the site. Chemical analysis has shown that they come from a place called West Woods in the Marlborough Downs, around 20 miles north. The journey is shorter, but made just as treacherous by the sheer scale of these stones. The average sarsen weighs 25 tons. The average sarsen weighs 25 tons.

It's early morning in spring. But the workers are already sweating through their tunics. A dozen men pull on ropes, their hands wrapped in leather to prevent burns from the rough plant fibers. Behind them, a huge sarsen stone inches along on timber rollers. Going uphill is an effort, but it is going downhill that frightens the men. They have lookouts, walking beside the pulling team, to shout in case the rock picks up speed and threatens to run out of control, rolling too fast and crushing anything or anyone in its path. One of the lookouts is the stonemason who shaped this rock. He wants to keep both the men

and the stone safe. He has spent months shaping it. When it slots into place, it will be the one that catches the sun. Heaving and groaning, the men haul the stone into the henge. Close to the center, a pit has been prepared, deeper than two men. It is lined with wooden stakes to stop the sides collapsing. On the far side of the pit, at ground level, stands a massive A-frame. On the far side of the pit, at ground level, stands a massive A-frame. It's an intricate construction of two full-sized tree trunks lashed together with rope. The men roll the sarsen stone to its position on the edge of the pit.

Now it's time for the strongest people to pull again. Standing beyond the A-frame, they gather up their ropes. At a shout from the foreman, they take the strain and they heave. The stonemason watches nervously. All his work is for nothing if the rock cracks or splits. His heart pounds as the sarsen slides over the rollers, tilts up towards the sky, and then crashes into the bottom of the pit. It sways for a moment, but then stops, perfectly upright. Everyone breaks into cheers, but not for long. There is still work to be done. Now the stonemason gets involved, selecting pieces of rubble to throw down into the pit,

Now the stonemason gets involved, selecting pieces of rubble to throw down into the pit, hoping to make sure his precious sarsen stays in place for generations to come. All over the British Isles and the rest of Europe during the late Neolithic era, people are moving and raising stones to create sacred circles. But it is only at Stonehenge that expert craftsmen make the innovative leap of shaping the rocks using methods more commonly associated with woodworking. It is this technology that means so many of them are still standing four and a half thousand years later. four and a half thousand years later. The arrangement of stones in 2500 BC is complex. Inside the henge stands a series of concentric circles.

The outer ring is a continuous circle of sarsens 30 meters in diameter. The uprights are topped by lintels balanced four metres above the ground. Each of the uprights has been levelled to counteract the slope of the land, so that there is little height difference around the circle. Inside that sarsen ring stand two semi-circles of Welsh bluestones. In the centre stand the mighty Trillithons. These are the tallest structures at Stonehenge, each consisting of two vertical sarsens supporting a third stone lintel. There are five of these massive Trillithons in a horseshoe arrangement. They're clustered around a central stone, possibly the focal point of the

whole complex, which is known as the altar stone. Intriguingly, 300 years after this arrangement was laboriously moved into place, some of the blue stones are moved again to make a second horseshoe that also cups the altar stone. Why? Nobody knows. It is just typical of the changing nature of Stonehenge. Today, three complete trilithons remain standing, including one that collapsed in 1797 and was re-erected in 1958. The other two fell at some unknown point in history, including the

tallest structure known as the Great Trilithon. This one stands at the head of the horseshoe, looming over the altar stone. The sides of its two uprights are smooth and flattened. The Great Trilithon includes the most finely worked stones on the site, because it is in the small space framed by these three stones that the midwinter sun is captured when it sets on the solstice each year in December. Now the lintel and one vertical of the Great Trilithon lie criss-crossed on the ground over the altar stone, but the remaining vertical reveals further secrets of the stonemasons.

Since an archaeologist devised a numbering system for the stones in the late 19th century, the tallest sarsen of the Great Trilithon is known as Stone 56. It is over seven meters high. On the top is a lump about the size of a football called a tenon that forms part of a joint. On the lintel that now lies on the ground below, there are corresponding rounded indents called mortise holes. When the lintel was placed on top of stone 56 and its twin sarsen back in 2500 BC, each protruding tenon would have slotted into a mortise hole, rather like modern-day Lego bricks.

But how did our ancestors lift a massive lintel seven meters high and lower it into place with such accuracy. No one really knows how Neolithic people moved these heavy objects when they had no access to metal or wheels. We don't know because fundamentally there's no evidence. Now we know how the stones were shaped because at Stonehenge there are all these stone hammers, these mauls from the size of an orange to the size of a football, stone hammers, these mauls from the size of an orange to the size of a football, because the only way that you can shape those stones is just by pounding away at the surface and you're removing chips and eventually sand. So an incredibly laborious process. But apart from that, and the antler picks that we used to dig the ditch and to dig the holes that the stones went into, we have no evidence.

Because of course, whatever it was, whether it was rollers, sledge, ropes, levers, A-frames, none of that survives because it's all organic. So all we can do is to make educated guesses and to experiment. And of course, if you do an experiment and it works, that doesn't say that that was the way of doing it. It just shows that it was one possible way of doing it. So there's just so many ideas about stone movement, sledges, rollers, bizarre ideas like you encasing a stone in like a giant wooden garden roller and trundling it along, which strikes me as being the most terrifyingly dangerous thing to do.

We do know that the final shaping was done quite close to Stonehenge because just on the other side of where the road used to be, there's a whole area there that is just a carpet of stone chippings, where clearly that was the workshop where the stones were worked. I think one of the most fascinating things about that was that when an excavation was done there a few years ago, there was an area that was free of stone chippings, and it was the outline of a stone. So clearly that was where the stone had sat. They'd worked all this stuff off around it, taken the stone away and left this sort of ghostly imprint of where the stone had been. It's one of those connection moments really, isn't it?

If aspects of the construction of Stonehenge remain unproven by archaeology, then its purpose is an even greater mystery. is an even greater mystery. That has not stopped scholars and some fantasists from speculating. The theory that Stonehenge was a cemetery has been proven by the discovery of 63 sets of interred ashes

inside the henge from its very early days. But these burials stop during the heyday of its stone building. The Victorians thought it was a place where pagans performed macabre rituals. In the 19th century, they made much of the so-called slaughter stone, a rock that lies outside the main circle. When it rains, water collects in hollows and turns rusty red, like old blood. But now archaeologists know that the water that pools there is colored by iron in the rock and algae on the exterior. It is not caused by the blood of sacrificial victims rising to the surface,

as some Victorians believed. Some have argued that stonehenge is a place of healing others that it was a soundscape where people could enjoy music because the arrangement of stones creates an acoustic effect similar to a cathedral or concert hall anthropologists suggest stonehenge may have been a national project, a team-building exercise that helped Neolithic people from all over the country to bond. Hence, the Welsh brought their bluestones. Workers arrived from the north with their livestock on the hoof. People from Marlborough gave their sarsens. And scores of other unknown clans came here in an act of unity to create something for everyone, akin to a national stadium today.

There is little doubt that prehistoric people came to Stonehenge from far and wide. It may be that the imposing stone circle was the final stop on a long pilgrimage. A short distance from Stonehenge, only two miles northeast, is another circle called Woodhenge. Although its timbers have long since gone, archaeologists found evidence of six concentric ovals of wooden posts. It was built in 2500 BC, at the same time as the more famous Stone Circle. Woodhenge is surrounded by a similar ditch and bank. The diameters of Stonehenge and Woodhenge are roughly the same. Both sites are connected to the River Avon by an earthwork avenue.

But why is one made of stone and the other of wood? Some scholars argue that timber is associated with the living and stone with the dead, which makes the two sites interlocking circles of opposites, yin and yang, as another ancient culture might say. Intriguingly, in 1920, a cairn in the center of Woodhenge was excavated and the remains of a young child found. and the remains of a young child found. The infant's skull was badly damaged, perhaps by an axe. Tragically for archaeologists, those bones were removed and lost.

It means we will never know if the infant was buried at the same time as the wooden circles were constructed, or at a later date. Does the damaged skull suggest that the child was sacrificed as part of the construction? Or is Woodhenge a tomb for that child who died violently but accidentally? Maybe a beloved toddler was buried much later in the middle of a sacred site that brought comfort to its grieving parents. No one knows. Similarly, no one knows what Woodhenge might have looked like. Were its timbers as tall as trees or short stumps? Were they carved or smooth?

Did they have all their branches left intact, strewn with flower garlands, or decorated with textiles in the manner of Tibetan prayer flags? What we do know about woodhenge is that, like its neighbouring circle made of stone, it is carefully aligned to the sun. This solar alignment, this emphasis on the sun, which is not something that you just see at Stonehenge, but you see it in so many other monuments of that period all around the British Isles. The sun is the bringer of life. Without the sun, plants wither and die, animals don't thrive. You're living still as part of the natural world at that time.

You've sort of partly tamed it, you've partly controlled it, but now you're still very much under the influence of nature. What you want to know is that the sun, this bringer of life, which goes on this annual journey around the sky, is going to carry on doing that. It's not going to die. It's not going to get darker and darker. And that's it. Because an endless winter means you die.

So that turning point, I think that's the key to Stonehenge. So these days in our calendar, around June the 21st, that's when people gather and the sun rises in that direction, shines into the centre of the stones. 180 degrees the other way, and midwinter, the sun sets, or would have set, And midwinter, the sun sets or would have set between the two uprights of the tallest of the Sarsen Trilithans. Now, sadly, that's now a ruin and there's only one upright.

But the narrow gap between it, the midwinter setting sun goes down in that gap between the stones. And I have to say, it's an amazing thing. If you get one of those really strong red winter suns, it's an amazing spectacle because it's just like a sort of red beating heart and it drops so rapidly and the sky changes colour so rapidly. So this thing goes down, drops below the horizon, you know, the colours, and then it goes dark. So it's a very dramatic event. So that is the key alignment that's built into the structure of Stonehenge. Who knows for how many years people came to Stonehenge to witness the winter sun drop between the three stones of the Great Trilithon, and then celebrate its return the following morning. Hundreds of years, maybe thousands. But by the year 1700 BC, people are fascinated

by new technologies. Instead of building monuments, they focus on acquiring prestigious metal objects, such as copper daggers or gold jewelry, which they leave behind as grave goods. They honor their ancestors now with metal, not stone. Around this time, the trilithons of Stonehenge are carved with depictions of weapons. Daggers or arrowheads are still visible on stone 53, one of the remaining uprights. The prehistoric graffiti echoes the metal grave goods that were being buried at that time in barrows, or earthwork tombs, on the hillsides around Stonehenge. It is as though Bronze Age people wanted to link their burials to the ancient stones using these images. Historical graffiti is not unusual at Stonehenge.

Another trilithon, Stone 52, is clearly engraved with the letters W-R-E-N, or Wren. The stone is thought to have been defaced by Sir Christopher Wren, who really should have known better. He is famous as the architect who designed St. Paul's Cathedral and helped rebuild much of the capital after the Great Fire of London in 1666. But he still found time to carve his name on Stonehenge. But at some point in its long history, the caretakers of the sacred stones abandon their greatest monument. After a millennia and a half of labor, why do they walk away?

The last thing that happens structurally is in about 1600 BC. So, I mean, that's 1400 years after the ditch was dug, 900 years after the stones were put up. There are some circles of pits dug around the outside of the stones. We're really not quite sure what for, but that's the last physical, structural alteration that happens to it. And then after that, I think because society changes, you see the landscape around there change from one of burial and ceremony that suddenly you start to get farmsteads, field boundaries. It becomes a more normal landscape. And so really, it seems to sort of slip into a sort of obscurity then for the rest of prehistory.

There's no evidence of it being used in terms of things being deposited there. Weirdly, there's a lot more Roman activity than we thought a few years ago, because the last excavation in the stones back in 2008 produced an awful lot of Roman material and evidence of pit digging and possibly even moving some of the blue stones around. So it may have been used as a shrine in Roman times. And there is evidence from other prehistoric sites of them being sort of adapted in that way. But then after that, I suppose it sort of again slips into being a sort of curiosity.

Across millennia, Stonehenge stands proud on Salisbury Plain. The sun continues to rise and set in perfect alignment with its trilithons. Perhaps there is a lunar alignment too, but if so, that knowledge is lost. The timbers of Woodhenge rot away. Farmers who plough the fields for season after season break down the earthworks of the superhenge at Durrington Walls until it is no more than a ripple on the land. One day the great Trilithon falls, with no one to lament it. But the site is never forgotten. It is adopted by newcomers. A thousand years after its construction, a Celtic religious sect known as Druids start

to hold rituals at Stonehenge. Their great rivals the Romans set up shrines on the site too. In time, these also crumble away, as Stonehenge outlives another civilization. On one bloody day in the latter half of the 7th century AD, a Saxon man is dragged to Stonehenge. It is to be his last journey. By this time, the local nobility of Salisbury Plain have converted from the pagan beliefs of the Druids to Christianity. Perhaps this Saxon man is a non-believer. He must have done something transgressive, because he is taken to Stonehenge and executed. His skeleton, when it is rediscovered in 1923, shows that he was beheaded with a single blow of a sword.

shows that he was beheaded with a single blow of a sword. Later, as written records develop, it becomes clear that Stonehenge has long fascinated and puzzled generations of Britons. There are references to it in the 12th century. There are manuscript illustrations that clearly show Stonehenge, and this is where some of the legends about it was flown over from Ireland by Merlin and re-erected with the help of giants.

Those are the first references. There's no reference to it in any classical writer. There's no Roman reference to Stonehenge, which is odd in some ways because it is so distinctive. And people have tried to find something. I mean, there's a reference in one classical writer to the Temple of Apollo in the land of the Hyperboreans. Now, Apollo being the sun god, you sort of think,

ah, sun, Stonehenge. But then the land of the Hyperboreans is also described as a land where the sun shines perpetually. Now, that's not written. So basically there is no reference to it. It's only in the early medieval period. And then the first appearance of its name, there's a lovely little manuscript illustration from the 14th century that shows what is clearly Stonehenge. Somebody's actually seen it, and that's where the name Stonehenge is first spelled out in the way that we recognise it today.

Over the years, scholars who tried to interpret Stonehenge and decipher its function have not always let the facts stand in the way of a good story. Wild ideas and conspiracy theories abound about the origins of the stones and all the mysterious structures that surround it. Another curious element of the wider Stonehenge complex lies on public land 700 meters north of the circle. Now it is called the Cursus. A long, thin, rectangular earthwork on a vast scale.

A long, thin, rectangular earthwork on a vast scale, the cursus is almost two miles long and 150 meters wide. Modern archaeological dating methods tell us that it predates the Henge. Perhaps it is a thousand years older than the stone circle. But nothing can tell us what it was for. Its name, cursus, came from this 18th century antiquarian, William Stukeley, who thought it was a racetrack for chariot racing and was Roman. You know, logic, rounded ends, come up, race your chariot up and down it. We now know that it's Neolithic, but whenever you look at it,

whenever you excavate sections through its ditch or anything like that, there's nothing in them. It's actually clean. So it's not about doing something that involves depositing objects. There's no pottery, there's no animal bone that suggests feasting or anything like that. If it actually is a processional way, if it is something about processing, whenever I walk along it with a group of people, I'll say, okay, we're walking in the footsteps of the people who built this. What trace are we leaving?

We could be carrying banners and banging drums and dancing and singing and going up and down this. Not a trace. And this is the case with other cursus monuments around the country, that where they've been dug, generally, they're clean. I mean, somebody's even used the phrase, ritually clean. The scholar William Stukeley is also the first to associate Stonehenge with the Druids. In fact, he has a somewhat whimsical fascination with the glory and gory nature of this sect, their ancient knowledge and reputation for bloody sacrifice.

His iconic book, Stonehenge, a Temple Restored to the British Druids, published in 1740, forever sets up a connection in the public mind. Unfortunately, Stukely is bound by the technological limitations of his era, and his timing is out by thousands of years. Stonehenge wasn't built by Druids, but modern followers of pagan and Wiccan beliefs still feel a strong affinity with the site. In the more recent and tragic history of Stonehenge, the monument becomes a symbol of anti-establishment conflict. It is the 1st of June, 1985. A convoy of around 150 vehicles snakes along a country lane in the south of England.

snakes along a country lane in the south of England. These are New Age travellers, counter-cultural nomads who live off-grid, in vans and yurts on public land. The British media denounce them as hippies. Today, a young woman has hitched a lift in a repurposed double-decker bus towards the back of the peace convoy. Like many of the self-proclaimed crusties,

she wears a flowing cotton dress and flowers in her hair. They are en route to the traditional summer gathering at Stonehenge. It is her first time at the iconic Free Festival, which started in 1974 as a utopian jamboree of a few hundred people who came together to soak up the spiritual energy of the stones. of a few hundred people who came together to soak up the spiritual energy of the stones. But over the past decade has grown into a fully-fledged festival, attracting tens of thousands of revelers and rock bands such as The Damned and Hawkwind. For some, the Stonehenge Festival is out of control. The police are concerned by drug use and crime. The government body that manages the site, English Heritage, objects to people climbing and dancing on the protected stones.

In previous years, revelers have driven their vans over the ancient cursus and dug latrines into prehistoric barrow tombs. While most are peaceful and respectful of the sacred venue, too many are willing to damage it. The High Court agrees and issues an injunction to stop the free festival. But ideological tensions between the New Age travelers and the police run deeper than one disputed event, and they are about to come to a head. At the back of the convoy, the young woman jerks as the bus stops. She climbs to the top deck to get a better view. They are still seven miles from Stonehenge,

but word soon travels between vehicles that there is trouble up ahead. Apparently the stone circle has been fenced in by rolls of vicious razor wire, and there is a roadblock. The travelers are being prevented from accessing the sacred site. On the road ahead, a van from the front of the convoy suddenly swerves, crashing through a hedge into a field of crops. Others follow, and soon they face off against police cars. Inside the bus, the young woman hears shouts and then screams.

As some of the travelers are confronted by police officers with batons and shields. Beside the road, some travelers are locked in angry confrontation with the police. And things are escalating fast. Soon she realizes there's no way back to the peaceful utopia she'd been expecting. It's not a festival. It's a riot. The conflict in 1985 becomes known as the Battle of Beanfield. It is one of the darkest days in the modern history of Stonehenge. The standoff lasts for hours. Over 500 people are

arrested. What we, the ITN camera crew, and myself as a reporter have seen in the last 30 minutes here on this field has been some of the most brutal police treatment of people I've witnessed in my entire career as a journalist. There must be an inquiry. I don't know what the results will be of it, but at this stage, the number of people who've been hit by policemen, who've been clubbed whilst holding babies in their arms and in coaches around this field, is still to be counted. What the end result will be, we don't know, but there must surely be an inquiry after what's happened here today. There will be no formal inquiry. The police later say that travellers rammed their vehicles into the roadblocks. But travelers argue that the officers were heavy-handed and caused many injuries.

In the years that follow, one police officer is convicted for causing actual bodily harm. Many travelers are awarded damages. It is not until the year 2000 that tensions ease enough for the sacred stones to be reopened to pagans, druids and travelers on the summer solstice. Nowadays, English heritage allows managed access to the stone circle on holy days. Most visitors today are kept from direct contact with the stones by a simple rope. But even from a short distance, the sacred power of Stonehenge is palpable. The sight of its unique silhouette on the misty ridge is just as arresting in the 21st century as it was in Neolithic times. as it was in Neolithic times.

The thing about Stonehenge, why it is iconic, why it is recognisable all round the world, and you find it on everything from Japanese phone cards to Superman comics to adverts, you know, everything. It all comes down to the fact that it's got horizontal lintels on the top. Because if Stonehenge, if you think about it, if it had just been a series of uprights, no matter how beautifully shaped, it wouldn't have been recognisable, would it? But all you need to do is just put two things upright, one across the top, and it's instantly recognisable.

So, you know, you get, I mean, our local bakers around here did a poster of their new fruit nut bar, and they just had a picture of two fruit nut bars, one across the top, and underneath they said, monumental taste. And everybody knew what it was. And that is the key. It's the lintels. That's what makes it recognizable. And that's what makes it so iconic. That's what makes it recognizable and that's what makes it so iconic. While Stonehenge continues to have a role as a spiritual site for many people, for others it is simply a reminder of the achievements of our ancestors. A symbol of humanity's reliance on the land, the impact of the seasons, and an abiding link with the celestial movements in the ever-changing

and yet dependable sky above us.