ANNUAL PILGRIMAGE TO STONEHENGE

Evening Star, Issue 22443, 14 September 1936, Page 12

ANNUAL PILGRIMAGE TO STONEHENGE

MYSTERIOUS MEMORIALS FROM A DIM PAST BROUGHT UNDER GOVERNMENT PROTECTION Once a year, on June 21, hundreds of visitors come to Salisbury Plain from all parts of Britain in order to see the sun rise over England’s biggest puzzle. Following long established custom, they swarm on bicycles, on motor cars, and on foot over the roads from Salisbury, London, and Exeter, as the huge tri'iithohs of Stonehenge stand grey and forbidding in the night, and turn slowly red in the spreading dawn. These visitors, and tbe millions of their fellow countrymen all over Britain, are now the possessors of Stonehenge, for comparatively recently the sum of £32,000 was raised by public subscription in order that Stonehenge might be adequately protected for posterity. With this sum some 1,500 acres of land around the great megalithic monument have been purchased, and the whole area is now the property of the nation. It is the general opinion that the purchase was not made any too soon. Massive as is the scale of Stonehenge, the ravages of wind and rain have dealt hardly with it. Many of its stones are prostrate, including the famous Altar Stone, which is the centre of the whole monument. Two of its stones collapsed on the last day of the nineteenth century, but were restored in 1901, when, their foundations were strengthened. Stonehenge, too, has had to contend with the vandalism .and ignorance of men. The dairist, Evelyn, writing in the seventeenth century, shows' what was the public attitude and behaviour toward the monument in those days by observing that the stones were “ so exceeding hard that all my strength with a hammer could not break a fragment.” Stonehenge is no longer exposed to that kind of treatment, and the effects of weather arc to be counteracted as best they may. Stonehenge’s visitors have a better conception of the meaning and purpose of the huge erection than any of their predecessors, but the veil _of mystery is by no means entirely lifted from it even now.

Stonehenge. has been the subject of endless speculation down the ages. When the Saxons came to Britain 1,600 years ago, they found Stonehenge already many centuries old. It stood more or less as it does to-day, an earthwork 300 ft in diameter, surrounding a circle of stones some 98ft across. Inside this are the remnants of 30 upright stones, and inside these again is what once was a circle of smaller stones. In the centre are the famous trilithons, great upright stones supporting a massive cross-bar, and these surround the Altar Stone, which is in approximate alignment with the stone known as the Friar’s Heel and the rising sun. The question, when were the stones erected, has now been answered. The first step toward the solution of this particular mystery was taken in the eighteenth century, when a certain Dr Stukeley took elaborate measurements and suggested that Stonehenge was built in the fifth century, n.c., under Egyptian influence. This gave rise to the idea of the sun striking the Friar’s Heel and the Altar Stone simultaneously at dawn on Midsummer Day, and it was calculated that Stonehenge was probably built at a time when the sun and the two stones were in exact alignment on June 21. Some 30 or more years ago the astronomer, Sir Norman Lockyer, calculated that this date must have fallen roughly about 1800 n.c. Lately archaeological excavations have indicated that Stonehenge is a monument of the early Bronze Age, which confirms the date given by Sir Norman. The most recent scholarship believes Stonehenge to have been built for some ritual purpose, connected with the worship of the sun, but as yet no one knows the details of this worship. The old idea, first suggested by John Aubrey in the seventeenth century, that Stonehenge was a temple of the Druids, has now been completely abandoned. Most of the early speculations on the stones have been forsaken, but a little of the work of past ages remains.

The name of Stonehenge, the Handing Stones, so-called on account of the trilithons, was given by the Saxons, and the title of sarsens, held by the bigger grey stones, comes from the Middle Ages. At that time Stonehenge was thought to bo the work of demons, and these stones were called sarsens, after the Saracens, who. in the days of the Crusades, were identified with everything hostile to Christianity. But, though much of the mystery of Stonehenge remains, efforts arc stiil being made to pierce through to its origins, and these may one day be successful.