NATURE 
25 
THURSDAY, MAY §, 1902. 
STONEHENGE. 
The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History 
Magazine. Stonehenge and its Barrows. By William 
Long, M.A, F.S.A. Pp. 244; many illustrations. 
(1876.) Price 7s. 6d. 
The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History 
Magazine. Stonehenge Bibliography Number. By 
W. Jerome Harrison. Pp. 170 (1902.) Price 5s. 6d. 
HE Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History 
Society is to be warmly congratulated on its per- 
sistent and admirable efforts to do all in its power to 
enable the whole nation to learn about the venerable 
monuments of antiquity which it has practically taken 
under its scientific charge. 
Chief among these, of course, is Stonehenge, and it is 
fortunate for students that while interest in this structure, 
unique in so many particulars, is being revived, such a 
rich mine of information as that supplied by the Wilt- 
shire Society should be available. 
It is within the knowledge of all interested in archzo- 
logy that not long ago Sir Edmund Antrobus, the owner 
of Stonehenge, at the request of this famous local society, 
the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and 
the Society of Antiquaries, enclosed the monument in 
order to preserve it from further wanton destruction, and 
with the skilled assistance of Messrs. Carruthers and 
Detmar Blow set upright the most important menhir, 
which threatened to fall or else break off at one of the 
cracks. 
Ever since that time he has been the butt of agitations 
in the local parish councils, got up apparently by persons 
who care, not for the preservation of ancient monuments, 
but rather that there shall be no right of property in 
anything interesting enough to be worth chipping. 
The “unclimbable wire fence” recommended by the 
societies in question, the Bishop of Bristol being the 
president of the Wiltshire Society at the time, is by them 
regarded as a suggestion that the property is not national, 
the fact being that the nation has not bought the property 
and that it has been private property for centuries. 
It is curious to think that the very destruction of the 
monument is now urged as an argument against en- 
closure. The Zzes in a recent article tells us some of 
the arguments used before a Committee of the County 
Council. 
“There are old ways, long and systematically used, 
which lead directly to the stone circles, and the barbed wire 
stretches right across these ways. One fact alone is suffi- 
cient to prove their antiquity. The outermost circle of 
Stonehenge consists of an earth vallum worn down by time 
and weather, but still rising some feet above the natural 
surface of the ground. The ways in question cut through 
this vallum, which rises abruptly some three feet or so on 
either side of them.” 
Everybody except the devastators knows that this 
vallum is the equivalent of the temenos walls which 
surround the Egyptian temples, and is part and parcel 
of the temple. 
It is very sad to read, both in Mr. Long’s volume 
NO. 1697, VOL. 66] 
and the bibliography, of the devastation which has 
been allowed to go on for so many years and of the 
various forms it has taken. It appears that this temenos 
wall or vallum was the first to suffer by indiscrimin- 
ate driving over it, so that its original importance 
has now become so obliterated that many do not notice 
it as part of the structure; and that it bears the same 
relation to the interior stone circle as the nave of St. 
Paul’s does to the Lady Chapel. 
It appears also, from the 77es account of the meeting, 
that a recent paper by Mr. Penrose and myself on the 
orientation of Stonehenge may have added strength to 
one of the arguments so improperly employed and 
apparently endorsed by Mr. Shaw Lefevre and others :— 
“One fact of singular interest was elicited. There 
seems to have been a special gathering every year, 
numbering thousands of persons, at Stonehenge to witness 
the rising of the sun on the 21st of June. As Stonehenge, 
according to the best opinions, was originally constructed 
with reference to rites performed at this very moment, 
there is nothing extravagant in the supposition that there 
has been something in the nature of a public assembly 
on Salisbury Plain at midsummer ever since the circles 
of Stonehenge were first completed.” 
Meanwhile we trust the Wiltshire Society will continue 
its labours, which date back at least to 1866, for the pre- 
servation of the monument, and that the members of the 
various Councils concerned will read the literature the 
Society has printed and become less philistine in their 
attitude. If Stonehenge had been built in Italy or France 
or Germany, it would have been in charge of the State 
long ago. Let the County Council send a small com- 
mittee to Carnac to see how the equivalent monuments 
are looked after there. 
It is very sad that in this twentieth century there 
should be Englishmen philistine enough to wish to pre- 
serve a so-called “right of way” which cuts through 
the vallum twice and passes close by the most important 
and imposing stone circle in the world. It is still sadder 
that since Sir Edmund Antrobus, the present owner, has 
accepted the advice of the Societies I have named to 
enclose the monument, with a view to guard it from 
destruction and desecration, he has been assailed on all 
sides, as we have seen. The world of science has 
already one matter of the highest importance to thank 
him for, namely, the setting upright of the so-called 
leaning stone, which was tottering to its fall. Let us 
hope that before long the minor gaps in the vallum 
may also be filled up. When they are, the present 
upholders of the “right of way” through the major 
ones will be the first to insist that the road shall be 
deviated outside one of the most imposing monuments of 
the world. In the meantime, it is comforting to know 
that, thanks to what Sir Edmund Antrobus has done, 
no more stones will be stolen, or broken by sledge- 
hammers; that fires; that unskilled excavations such 
as were apparently the prime cause of the disastrous 
fall of one of the majestic trilithons in 1797 ; that litter, 
broken bottles and the like with which too many British 
sightseers mark their progress, besides much indecent 
desecration, are things of the past.- 
Let me now refer more particularly to the publications 
| of the Wiltshire Society bearing on Stonehenge. 
& 
