This celebrated monument of antiquity, a view of which is given in the
cut on the next page, stands in the middle of a flat area near the
summit of a hill, six miles distant from Salisbury. It is inclosed by a
double circular bank and ditch, nearly thirty feet broad, after crossing
which an ascent of thirty yards leads to the work. The whole fabric, of
which the cut exhibits only a section, was originally composed of two
circles and two ovals. The outer circle is about one hundred and eight
feet in diameter, consisting, when entire, of sixty stones, thirty
uprights, and thirty imposts, of which there now remain twenty-four
uprights only, seventeen standing, and seven down, three feet and a half
asunder, and eight imposts. Eleven uprights have their five imposts on
them at the grand entrance: these stones are from thirteen to twenty
feet high. The smaller circle is somewhat more than eight feet from the
inside of the outer one, and consisted of forty smaller stones, the
highest measuring about six feet, nineteen only of which now remain, and
only eleven standing. The walk between these two circles is three
hundred feet in circumference. The _adytum_, or cell, is an oval formed
of ten stones, from sixteen to twenty-two feet high, in pairs, and with
imposts above thirty feet high, rising in hight as they go round, and
each pair separate, and not connected as the outer pair: the highest
eight feet. Within these, are nineteen other smaller single stones, of
which six only are standing. At the upper end of the adytum is the
altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, twenty inches thick, sixteen
feet long, and four broad: it is pressed down by the weight of the vast
stones which have fallen upon it. The whole number of stones, uprights
and imposts, comprehending the altar, is one hundred and forty. The
stones, which have been by some considered artificial, were most
probably brought from those called the _gray weathers_ on Marlborough
downs, distant fifteen or sixteen miles; and if tried with a tool,
appear of the same hardness, grain and color, being generally reddish.
The heads of oxen, deer, and other beasts, have been found in digging in
and about Stonehenge; and in the circumjacent barrows, human bones. From
the plain to this structure there are three entrances, the most
considerable of which is from the north-east; and at each of them were
raised, on the outside of the trench, two huge stones, with two smaller
parallel ones within.
[Illustration: STONEHENGE.]
Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his history of the Britons, written in the
reign of King Stephen, represents this monument as having been erected
at the command of Aurelius Ambrosius, the last British king, in memory
of four hundred and sixty Britons who were murdered by Hengist the
Saxon. Polydore Virgil says that it was erected by the Britons as the
sepulchral monument of Aurelius Ambrosius, and other writers consider it
to have been that of the famous British queen Boadicea. Inigo Jones is
of opinion that it was a Roman temple; and this conclusion he draws from
a stone sixteen feet in length, and four in breadth, placed in an exact
position to the eastward, altar-fashion. By Charlton it is ascribed to
the Danes, who were two years masters of Wiltshire; a tin tablet, on
which were some unknown characters, having been dug up in the vicinity,
in the reign of Henry VIII. This tablet, which is lost, might have given
some information respecting its founders. Its common name, Stonehenge,
is Saxon, and signifies a “stone gallows,” to which the stones, having
transverse imposts, bear some resemblance. It is also called in Welch,
_choir gour_, or the giants’ dance. Mr. Grose, the antiquary, is of
opinion that Doctor Stukely has completely proved this structure to have
been a British temple, in which the Druids officiated. He supposes it to
have been the metropolitan temple of Great Britain, and translates the
words _choir gour_, “the great choir or temple.” It was customary with
the Druids to place one large stone on another for a religious memorial;
and these they often placed so equably, that even a breath of wind would
sometimes make them vibrate. Of such stones one remains at this day in
the pile of Stonehenge. The ancients distinguished stones erected with a
religious view, by the name of _ambrosiæ petræ_, _amber stones_, the
word _amber_ implying whatever is solar and divine. According to Bryant,
Stonehenge is composed of these amber stones; and hence the next town is
denominated Ambresbury.