IN printing this second edition of my little guide-book, I think it will
be found interesting and necessary to leave all the former evidence and
opinions that I collected as to the date of Stonehenge. Since the
excavations in 1901, I think we may consider the age of Stonehenge to be
between three and four thousand years. Mr. W. Gowland judges from the
implements or tools found, Sir Norman Lockyer and Dr. Penrose from
astronomical observations, based on the fact that the avenue (“Viâ
Sacra”) to Stonehenge from the east of the ancients was in a line with
the Altar Stone, so that the sun, rising on the day of the solar
half-year (June 21st) and creeping over the horizon, shed his beams on
the Altar Stone, thus marking the solar half-year. Of course, the east
of the ancients is not our east, but the difference between the position
of the sun _now_ and then to the avenue gives, according to these
gentlemen’s calculations, a date of 3700 years old to Stonehenge.