Wanderings in Wessex: An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to OtterHolmes, Edric
History
Wanderings in Wessex: An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter
Holmes, Edric
England -- Description and travel
The early aspect of Stonehenge was far more elaborate than as we see
it to-day, and the avenues that led to the inner circles and the
smaller and outer rings have to a large extent disappeared. The stones
are enclosed in a circular earthwork 300 feet across. The outer circle
of trilithons, 100 feet in diameter, is composed of monoliths of
sandstone originally four feet apart and thirty in number. Inside this
circle is another of rough unhewn stones of varying shapes and sizes.
Within this again, forming a kind of "holy place," are two
ellipses--the outer of trilithons five in number and the inner of blue
stones of the same geological formation as the rough stones of the
outer circle. Of these there were originally nineteen.
[Illustration: PLAN OF STONEHENGE (RESTORED).]
Near the centre is the so-called "altar stone," over fifteen feet
long; in a line with this, through the opening of the ellipse, is the
"Friar's Heel," a monolith standing outside the circles. The larger
stones or "sarsens" are natural to the Marlborough Downs, but the
unhewn or "blue" stones are mysterious. They are composed of a kind of
igneous rock not found anywhere near Wiltshire. A suggestion by
Professor Judd is that they are ice-borne boulders accidentally
deposited on the Plain during the southward drift of the great ice
cap. One of the sarsen stones is stained with copper oxide, and this
fact has been taken to point to Stonehenge being erected somewhere in
the Bronze Age--that is, not longer ago than 2000 B.C. Excavations
about twenty years ago brought to light a number of stone tools,
fragments of pottery, coins and bones. Belonging to a long period of
time, the finds were inconclusive. It is quite possible that the ring
of rough blue stones were erected by a primitive race of stone men and
that a continuous tradition of sanctity clung to the spot until, in
the time of those heirs and successors of theirs who used bronze
weapons and were acquainted with the rudiments of engineering, the
imposing temple that we call Stonehenge came into being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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