It was 6.45am on a Sunday morning and I was standing inside the circle at Stonehenge. I’d had romantic visions of watching the sun rising and hitting the stones as I gazed out at the mystical landscape in silent contemplation. Sadly it was dark and drizzly – but the magic was still there.
Being of a certain age, I had vague memories of standing in the circle as a child, back in the days when the public had open access. But the site’s inner reaches have been essentially off limits since the 70s, by which time graffiti and generally being loved to death for thousands of years had taken their toll on the giant stones.
Therefore it came as a big surprise to discover you can arrange private entry to the circle by prior arrangement with English Heritage. Better still, I was on a weekend trip arranged by Andante Travels, accompanied by an archaeologist who could really bring the ancient site to life.
The weekend kicked off with a talk by an expert on ancient Wessex, Dr Nick Thorpe, followed by visits to the magical stone circle of Avebury – one of my favourite spots in the world – and the atmospheric area around it. After a fascinating day, and a lively evening in a local restaurant, we set our alarms to early for our pre-dawn departure to Stonehenge.
“People will travel all the way to South America to visit the ancient sites, yet they won’t explore what’s on their own doorstep!” exclaimed archaeologist Andrew Lawson – our guide for the day – as we arrived at the site.
He walked around the circle, pointing out the mortises and tenons that join the stones together. “It’s all extremely sophisticated,” he noted. “Look how the lintels are slightly curved to reflect the bend of the circle. It took another 2,000 years before any other stone monuments of this sophistication were built in Europe – and that was by the Romans.”
I hadn’t really appreciated Stonehenge’s history and complexity until then – it was eye-opening to explore the stones with an expert. The site actually developed in three main phases over 1,500 years, and the first Stonehenge – dating back nearly 5,000 years – was a simple bank with a ditch and a ring of wooden posts. More timber structures were added, but it was several centuries before the stones arrived – first the smaller bluestones from south-west Wales, then the huge sarsen slabs from Marlborough Down that formed the famous shapes we are so familiar with.
Hanging on Andrew’s every word, we could have spent hours in the circle. But eventually we had to move on, and headed back to the car park for a warming brew. Even here, there was much to see. “See those white roundels over there?” Andrew asked. “They’re marking some of the early holes that held wooden posts.” We were horrified that the car park had been built over part of the site.
“Stonehenge is about so much more than the stones,” Andrew told us. “It’s a huge site, and 99.9% of the visitors don’t leave the circle to explore the rest of it. Ready for a walk?”
As the car park began to fill with coaches, we tramped away from the crowds across the prehistoric landscape. First stop was the Stonehenge Cursus, a rectangular earthwork around 3km long. Ploughing has destroyed much of the ground here, but there are still several surviving barrows (burial mounds).
Despite the inclement weather we were transfixed and again could have stayed much longer in this enchanting place. But we were due to visit nearby Durrington Walls, the world’s largest henge, where an excavation was taking place. Foundations of some Stone Age houses had just been found, dating back 4,600 years. So much to see, yet so little time...
We cut across the grassland to the Avenue, the ancient track that links Stonehenge with the beautiful River Avon. Some people believe this was the route that the bluestones travelled from the river, en route from Wales; some say it was an ancient processional route.
As we marched up the Avenue ourselves, the best view yet of the stone circle appeared dramatically on the horizon – and we all felt the same tingle that visitors 4,000 years ago would have felt as they walked this very route.
Further information:
www.stonehenge.co.uk
www.english-heritage.org.uk/stonehenge
