62 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



wrote " that neither any eie can count them just." Such an idea 

 still prevails. King Charles the Second, however, when he rode 

 up from Heale House with Colonel Robert Philips/ after the battle 

 of Worcester, appears to have overcome the difficulty. 



It was upon the top of the trilithon, immediately to the left of 

 the altar stone, to one entering from the avenue, that " my Lord 

 Winchilsea and Dr. Stukeley took a considerable walk,^' but, the latter 

 adds, " it was a frightful situation." Two young men, however, who 

 with their bicycles, paid a moonlight visit to Stonehenge in 1870, 

 seem to have found it otherwise. With the aid of a rope-ladder 

 they got to the top, and " found the situation anything but frightful, 

 for the lintel itself measures 15 feet 3 inches in length, and is 5 

 feet wide, so that one has really space enough, if not to take a 

 ' considerable walk,' yet to move about freely, with no fear of top- 

 pling over. From this eminence we obtained what we had long 

 desired, viz : a view of the original design of Stonehenge, such as 

 cannot be gained in wandering amongst the ruins below." Other 

 young men might not, however, find this " situation " so pleasant ; 

 and broken necks or collar-bones might be the consequence of their 

 little adventure. 



Mr. Ferguson, Q.C., of Dublin, perplexed by Henry of Hunting- 

 don's expression "ita ut portae portis superpositae videantur," and 

 Stowe's words," every couple sustaineth a third stone lying overthwart, 

 gatewise," after seeing that the impost of the great ti-ilithon had 

 cavities on its upper surface corresponding to the mortices on its 

 under surface, and which suggested to him the idea that they had 

 served as sockets for the reception of uprights supporting a second 

 impost, read a paper on the subject before the Royal Irish Academy, 

 January 9th, 1865. Bearing this in mind. Dr. Thurnam, on the 

 occasion of the visit of the Wilts Archaeological and Natural 

 History Society, to Stonehenge, in September, 1865, "obtained a 

 ladder at Lake and took it to Stonehenge on the summit of the 

 omnibus, and had it placed against the large trilithons. Several of 



* Colonel Philips said that " the King's arithmetic gave the lie to the fabulous 

 tale that these stones cannot be told alike twice together." 



