50 Fun Facts About Stonehenge

Stonehenge stands on Salisbury Plain in which English county?

It lies about two miles west of Amesbury, in the densest cluster of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England.

What is the name for the large sandstone blocks that form Stonehenge's outer ring and trilithons?

Each upright is around 13 feet high and weighs about 25 tons; the smaller inner stones are the bluestones.

What joinery technique, borrowed from woodworking, holds Stonehenge's lintels onto the uprights?

The lintels are also linked to each other with tongue-and-groove joints, a combination unique among monuments of the era.

What is a trilithon?

Five of them stand in a horseshoe at the centre of Stonehenge, the largest almost 25 feet tall.

Stonehenge is aligned to the sunrise on which day of the year?

The reverse alignment marks sunset on the winter solstice, which some archaeologists think was the more important event.

Roughly when was the great circle of sarsen stones erected?

The earliest bank and ditch date to about 3100 BC, and the last construction, the Y and Z holes, to around 1600 BC.

In which year was Stonehenge added to UNESCO's World Heritage list?

It had already been a legally protected scheduled monument since the Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882.

Which organisation manages Stonehenge on behalf of the Crown Estate?

The National Trust owns the surrounding downland but not the stones themselves.

The bluestones are generally accepted to have come from which upland area, 150 miles away?

A megalithic quarry found at Craig Rhos-y-felin in Pembrokeshire in 2011 is the most probable source of some of the stones.

In which country is Pembrokeshire, the source of the bluestones?

They lie almost entirely within Pembrokeshire, mostly inside the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

Research published in 2024 traced the Altar Stone to which region, some 430 miles from Stonehenge?

The Curtin University team matched fragments to the Orcadian Basin, implying links between southern England and the far north.

The 30 great uprights of Stonehenge's outer circle came from a quarry 16 miles north in which woodland?

A 1995 experiment saw more than 100 people drag a 40-ton slab on a sleigh across the Marlborough Downs.

How many sarsen uprights formed the complete outer circle?

The full monument would have needed 75 stones: 60 for the circle and 15 for the trilithon horseshoe.

How many Aubrey holes ring the inside of the enclosure bank?

They are named after John Aubrey, the 17th-century antiquary thought to have first spotted them, and may once have held a bluestone circle.

The outlying monolith over which the midsummer sun rises, seen from inside the circle, is known as what?

Older names include 'Friar's Heel' and 'Sun-stone'.

In the folk tale explaining the name 'Friar's Heel', who threw the stone that struck the friar?

The Devil had bought the stones from a woman in Ireland and boasted that nobody would ever know how they got there.

Which 12th-century writer claimed Merlin brought the stones from Ireland?

His History of the Kings of Britain says giants had originally carried the healing stones from Africa to Ireland.

In the medieval legend, who led the 15,000 men sent with Merlin to fetch the Giants' Ring from Ireland?

Uther was Arthur's father; the stones were re-erected in Britain exactly as they had stood.

Which 17th-century architect believed Stonehenge had been built by the Romans?

Later antiquaries such as William Stukeley preferred to credit the Druids.

Which naturalist experimented at Stonehenge in 1877 on how fast objects sink into soil, for a book about worms?

The book was The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms.

Who bought Stonehenge at auction in 1915 and later gave it to the nation?

He paid 6,600 pounds for Lot 15 on a whim, reportedly to keep the stones out of overseas hands, and was made a baronet in 1919.

How much did the winning bidder pay for Stonehenge at the 1915 auction?

That is roughly 587,000 pounds in today's money; his deed of gift capped admission at one shilling.

On what date was Stonehenge formally handed to the nation by its last private owner?

Just over two weeks later the First World War armistice was signed.

Which family had owned the Stonehenge estate since 1824 before the 1915 auction?

Sir Cosmo Gordon Antrobus put it up for sale after inheriting the estate from his brother.

Which archaeologist led the Stonehenge Riverside Project, calling the site a 'domain of the dead'?

He proposed that nearby Durrington Walls was the land of the living, with the River Avon linking the two.

Animal teeth suggest up to how many people gathered at Durrington Walls for solstice feasts around 2500 BC?

Parker Pearson thinks the site was the builders' camp; the animals had been slaughtered nine or fifteen months after spring birth.

A 2013 excavation recovered cremated remains of how many individuals from Aubrey Hole 7?

William Hawley had dug them up in 1920, thought them unimportant, and reburied them all together in 1935.

The bluestones may have first stood in a dismantled circle at which Welsh site?

The circle was the same 110-metre size as the first Stonehenge, and one stone hole matched a Stonehenge bluestone 'like a key in a lock'.

What images are carved on sarsen stone 53?

There are 14 axeheads on that stone alone; laser scanning suggests they resemble late Bronze Age weapons.

The 'Amesbury Archer', buried near Stonehenge around 2300 BC, grew up in which region?

His grave, found in 2002, held England's oldest known gold objects; the press dubbed him the King of Stonehenge.

The Amesbury Archer's grave held tools suggesting he practised which craft?

Cushion stones that served as portable anvils were among the finds, alongside three tiny copper knives.

Which henge, listed with Stonehenge, contains the world's largest megalithic stone circle?

A village grew up inside the monument in the early Middle Ages; it shares Stonehenge's World Heritage listing.

Woodhenge, two miles from Stonehenge, was identified in 1926 by what means?

Pilot Gilbert Insall VC took the picture; Maud and Ben Cunnington then excavated the timber circle.

The trilithon that fell in 1797 and was re-erected in 1958 stood at which point of the horseshoe?

Restorations in 1901, 1920, 1958 and 1963 set several stones in concrete, a fact English Heritage only publicised widely in 2004.

Who oversaw the first major restoration of Stonehenge in 1901, setting stone 56 in concrete?

His dig revealed more about how the stones were erected than the previous century of work.

Which neo-Druid group held a mass initiation of 259 members at Stonehenge in August 1905?

Historian Ronald Hutton noted the irony that modern Druids arrived just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient ones.

The Stonehenge Free Festival ran from 1972 until which year, by then drawing about 30,000 people?

A High Court injunction shut it down in 1985, and no religious access to the stones was allowed for almost fifteen years afterwards.

What name was given to the violent 1 June 1985 clash between police and travellers heading for Stonehenge?

About 1,300 police officers confronted roughly 600 travellers who had been stopped seven miles from the stones.

Which trunk road south of Stonehenge was to be buried in a tunnel before the 2024 cancellation?

Costs had risen to an estimated 1.7 billion pounds; the tunnel's consent order was formally revoked in 2026.

Where is Carhenge, a replica of Stonehenge built from spray-painted vintage cars?

Jim Reinders dedicated it at the June 1987 summer solstice; it uses 39 automobiles.

Charcoal from the Blick Mead spring camp near Stonehenge has been dated as far back as when?

Mesolithic pine posts beneath the old car park go back further still, to about 8000 BC.

The Old English word 'henge' behind the monument's name most likely means what?

Eleventh-century writers called it 'stanenges', stones supported in the air; Stukeley translated it as 'the hanging stones'.

The Y and Z Holes, the last known construction at Stonehenge, date from about when?

They were probably last used in the Iron Age, when the hillfort called Vespasian's Camp rose near the Avenue.

The Stonehenge Avenue's parallel banks and ditches run two miles to which river?

Parker Pearson sees the river as a ritual route between Durrington Walls, the land of the living, and Stonehenge, the land of the dead.

In which county did Charles Warne record a monolith at Long Bredy sharing the name of Stonehenge's outlier?

That monolith is at Long Bredy, showing the name was not unique to Salisbury Plain.

Roughly how much does each sarsen upright in the outer ring weigh?

The larger trilithon stones in the inner horseshoe can weigh up to 50 tons each.

Mesolithic postholes dating to about 8000 BC were found beneath what part of the Stonehenge site?

Four, or possibly five, large pits predate the stone monument by some five thousand years.

What did William Hawley find in the Slaughter Stone socket during the 1920 restoration?

The earlier excavator William Cunnington had left it there; Hawley also rediscovered the Aubrey holes and found the Y and Z Holes.

Which Welsh village rang local bluestones as church bells until the 18th century?

Royal College of Art researchers found the igneous bluestones give a loud clang when struck.

Which numbered sarsen fell during a fierce storm on 31 December 1900?

The collapse prompted William Gowland's first major restoration the following year.