February i6, 1905J 



NA TURE 



367 



NOTES ON STONEHENCE.' 

 III. — The Earliest Circles. 

 ■\>;7HEN we come to examine Stonehenge carefully 

 • ' in relation to the orientation theory, it soon 

 becomes clear that its outer circle of upright stones 

 with lintels and the inner naos, built of trilithons, 

 oriented in the line of the " avenue " and the summer 

 solstice sunrise, are not the only things to be con- 

 sidered. These stones, all composed of sarsen, which, 

 be it remarked, have been trimmed and tooled, are 

 not alone in question. We have : — 



(i) .An interior circle broken in many places, and 

 other stones near the naos, composed of stones. 



^ 



-Map of the Stones 



by the Ordnance Survey. A, N.W. 

 riar's Heel ; D, Slaughter stone. 



"blue stones," which, as we have seen, are of an 

 entirely different origin and composition. 



(2) Two smaller untrimmed sarsen stones lying near 

 the vallum, not at the same distance from it, the line 

 joining them passing nearly, but not quite, through 

 the centre of the sarsen circle. The amplitude of the 

 line joining them is appro.ximately 26° S. of E. and 

 26°_N. of \V. Of these the stump of the N.W. stone 

 is situated 22 feet from the top of the vallum according 

 to the Ordnance plan. The S.E. stone has fallen, but 

 according to careful observations and measurements 

 by Mr. Penrose, when erect its centre was 14 feet 

 from the top of the vallum. The centre of the line 

 joining the stones is therefore 4 feet to the S.E. of 



^ Continued from p. 34?. 



NO. 1842, VOL. 71] 



the axis of the present circles, which, it may be stated, 

 passes 3 feet to the N.W. of the N.W. edge of the 

 Friar's Heel (see Fig. 8). 



There are besides these two large untrimmed sarsen 

 stones, one standing some distance outside the vallum, 

 one recumbent, lying on the vallum, both nearly, but 

 not quite, in the sunrise line as viewed from the centre 

 of the sarsen circle. These are termed the " Friar's 

 Heel " and " Slaughter Stone " respectively. 



I will deal with (i) first, and begin by another quota- 

 tion from Mr. Cunnington, who displayed great 

 acumen in dealing with the smaller stones not sarsens. 

 " The most important consideration connected with 

 the smaller stones, and one which in its archaeological 

 bearing has been too much over- 

 looked, is the fact of their having 

 been brought from a great distance. 

 I expressed an opinion on this sub- 

 ject in a lecture delivered at Devizes 

 more than eighteen years ago, and 

 I have been increasingly impressed 

 with it since. I believe that these 

 stones would not have been brought 

 from such a distance to a spot where 

 an abundance of building stones 

 4 equally suitable in every respect 

 /^ '^ already existed, unless some special 



or religious value had been attached 

 to them. This goes far to prove 

 that Stonehenge was j originally a 

 temple, and neither a monument 

 raised to the memory of the dead, 

 nor an astronomical calendar or 

 almanac. 



" It has been suggested that they 

 were Danams, or the offerings of 

 successive votaries. Would there in 

 such case have been such uniformity 

 of design or would they have been 

 all alike of foreign materials? I 

 would make one remark about the 

 small impost of a trilithon of 

 syenite, now lying prostrate within 

 the circle. One writer has followed 

 another in taking it for granted that 

 there must have been a second, 

 corresponding with it, on the oppo- 

 / site side. Of this there is neither 



proof nor record, not a trace of one 

 having been seen by any person 

 / who has written on the subject. 



y This small impost, not being of 



sarsen, but syenite, must have be- 

 longed to the original old circle; 

 it may even have suggested to the 

 builders of the present Stonehenge 

 >ne; b, S.E. stone : llir idea of the large imposts and 

 trilithous. -villi their tenons and 

 mortices. " 

 In Prof. Gowland's examination of the contents of 

 the holes necessarilv dug in his operations, it was found 

 that the quantity of blue stone chippings was much 

 greater than that from the sarsen stones. While the 

 sarsen stones had only been worked or tooled on their 

 surface, the blue stones had been hewed and trimmed 

 in extraordinary fashion; indeed, it is stated by Prof. 

 Judd that some of them had been reduced to half their 

 original dimensions in this process, though evidence of 

 this statement is not given. 



It seems, then, that when the sarsen stones were 

 set up, the sarsen and blue stones were treated very 

 differently. This being so, the following quotation 

 from Prof. Judd's " Note " is interesting (Archaeo- 

 logia, Iviii., p. 8i) : — 



/v 



