76 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



had previously recorded, in the " Monumenta Britannica," that 

 " the inhabitants about the Amesburies had defaced this monument 

 since his remembrance, sc, one large stone was carried away to make 

 a bridge." 



Mr. Kemm, in answer to enquiries made by the Secretaries of the 

 Wiltshire Society, in the Magazine, says (vol. xi., p. 24^3) : " My 

 father resided for twenty-five years in West Amesbury House, and 

 I have often heard him express his conviction, that a considerable 

 quantity of fragments of the stones of Stonehenge were built into 

 its walls. 1 could myself point out pieces of stone in the garden 

 wall, which appear to be precisely similar in quality to the stones of 

 the outer circle . . • Stonehenge stands on the estate, so that 

 the builder of the house was the owner of the monument." 



Mr. Cunnington says (vol. xi., p. 348) : " Depredations are still 

 perpetrated on Stonehenge by excursionists and other visitors. About 

 two years ago, a mass, which must have weighed nearly 56 pounds, 

 was broken, apparently by means of a sledge hammer, from the hard 

 schist, marked No. 9 in Hoare's plan. The soft stones are frequently 

 much'chipped. On the 17th of July last (1868), a party of Goths 

 lighted a fire against one of the stones on the south-east side of the 

 outer circle, by which it was much damaged and disfigured, and 

 several fragments were broken ofi" by the heat." 



In Mr. Henry L. Long's book previously alluded to, is the fol- 

 lowing suggestion respecting the pre-historic injury done to Stone- 

 henge : "There now remain at Stonehenge, upright and prostrate, 

 about ninety-one stones; originally there must have been about one 

 hundred and thirty. It is to be hoped that the work of destruction 

 is now at an end; and that this unique monument of antiquity may 

 experience no further demolitions. It has suffered most on the 

 southern side— certainly the quarter of the most violent winds; but 

 we can hardly suppose that winds would have any appreciable effect 

 upon such mighty and such deeply-fixed masses. Something may 

 have been done by excavators in search of imagined treasures, but 

 I am more inclined to attribute their overthrow to the same cause 

 that inspired their construction, namely, to religious fervour ; for 

 we know that, upon the conversion from paganism to Christianity, 



