{"id":11137,"date":"2022-02-22T13:29:52","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T12:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=200741"},"modified":"2022-02-22T13:42:12","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T12:42:12","slug":"stonehenge-a-historians-guide-to-visiting-the-stones","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/stonehenge-a-historians-guide-to-visiting-the-stones\/","title":{"rendered":"Stonehenge: a historian\u2019s guide to visiting the stones"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Mike Pitts\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 22 February 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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There\u2019s a lot to do at Stonehenge<\/a>, but I\u2019ll start with the obvious: stones. There are many, and they\u2019re not all the same. The path up to the site takes you to a close vantage point (and a good place for photos) from which you look south east across to the monument. Many are fallen on this side, so as you move to right and left you can see into the centre of the henge.<\/p>\n

The first thing to notice is that there are two sizes and shapes of stone. Most are large and slab-like, and include horizontal lintels: these are made from sarsen, a hard sandstone sourced from within 20 miles. The smaller more rounded pillars, with no lintels, are the bluestones. Most of these are igneous rocks brought from south-west Wales (behind you), a journey of more than 200 miles. The completed Stonehenge had a ring of 30 standing sarsens supporting a ring of 30 lintels. These surrounded five groups, each of two taller sarsens independently supporting a lintel, known as trilithons. The trilithons stood on a horseshoe plan open to the rising midsummer sun to the north-east (roughly to your left). Bluestones (many more than there are now) were arranged in a ring inside the sarsen circle, and more stood inside the horseshoe, again mirroring the plan.<\/p>\n

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A closer look<\/h3>\n

The more you look, the more you see. Every stone is different. Sarsens were heavily dressed with stone hammers, and when the light is right you can sometimes pick out effects of such work, shallow parallel grooves and smoothed surfaces. You can see many irregular hollows left from the original boulders. At the base of one large standing sarsen is a curious flat block: this is concrete, put there in the 1960s to fill a large natural hole that the authorities worried was unsafe. Look closely at the top of that stone and toward the right edge you can see a lump like an upturned bowl. This is a tenon, carefully carved, that would have fitted into a hollow or mortise in the lintel that it and its partner supported, to form a trilithon. The two missing stones are beyond in the grass, each broken into three pieces.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe more you look, the more you see,\u201d writes Mike Pitts. \u201cEvery stone is different.\u201d (Image by Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Continuing to the right is another stone with a tenon on top, smooth, thin and the tallest of them all, restored to a perfect vertical in 1901. This is part of the Great Trilithon, which once framed the setting midwinter sun to the right. Its partner stone and battered lintel lie on the ground behind. Just in front is a small, leaning, rounded megalith with a groove the length of one side. It\u2019s thought that this uniquely shaped bluestone once fitted a partner with a ridged side, of which only a stump survives. Behind rise two complete trilithons, one of them with a particularly finely carved lintel.<\/p>\n