A Walk by Stonehenge – part 1

Posted on March 21, 2023 by johnshortlandwriter

It is many years since I last visited Stonehenge, the prehistoric standing stones so closely attuned to the midsummer solstice. Renowned throughout the world, it has been listed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986. With fame comes numerous issues, not least how to cope with the estimated one million visitors that come to see them each year. To prevent damage to the stones through soil erosion and, surprisingly, physical damage through the chipping off of ‘mementos’, the stones are now cordoned off. This fencing is removed to allow access at the time of the midsummer solstice, a time when hundreds of people wait through the night for the midsummer sun to rise directly between the stones. The image below is of a postcard that my great-aunt sent me in 1963 when the stones were much less frequently visited and reminds me of those early years when I used to play amongst them.

*Stonehenge was far less visited back in the 1960s!*

The Stonehenge World Heritage Site covers an area that includes other Neolithic standing stones close by. A few miles away, and unlike Stonehenge, a place where you can walk amongst the stones every day of the year, is Avebury. This circle is huge and considerably older than Stonehenge: flint tools dating back 9000 years show that early man was passing that way 4000 years before Stonehenge was built. Avebury is the place to visit if you want to get close enough to touch the stones and it is also completely free to visit. To visit Stonehenge can be quite costly although there is another way you can see the stones (legally) without paying if you’re prepared to walk – see below.

*Avebury Stone Circle – part of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site*

The third site, and to my mind, the best one for you will almost certainly have the place to yourself, is known as Woodhenge & Durrington Walls. To be really impressed by this comparatively unknown place you do need to know some background information of its history plus a vivid imagination. For me, it is such an atmospheric place to visit that the latter has never been an issue! I recommend starting your walk here and walking inside the circle of Durrington Walls before exploring Woodhenge. The first thing that is noticeable about Durrington Walls is that there are no walls! The circular bank and ditch that surrounds the site was enormous and consisted of the bank itself which would have been several metres high. The ditch originally was over five metres deep and, in places, up to thirty metres wide. It is estimated that between four and six thousand people would have been needed to build the walls as well as the various houses and large timber circles associated with the site. A feat quite remarkable nowadays let alone over four thousand years ago using just antler pickaxes! Although nothing remains above ground now, apart from the bank, I found it very easy to imagine, as I walked alone and in silence, the bustle and noise of these industrious people.

*Within Durrington Walls, now a grassy bank, up to 6000 people once lived*

*Information boards help you to understand the context of what you are not seeing!*

Leaving Durrington Walls I made my way to the Cuckoo Stone, my only companions, sheep. Now fallen, this stone would originally have been placed upright. Looking at maps, it appears to be more, or less in line with the Great Cursus (more about that below) which in turn leads to Stonehenge. The Cuckoo Stone, positioned 4000 years ago, continued to be ritually used into Roman times for in 2007, during archaeological excavation, a small building thought to be a shrine from that period was discovered.

*Close to the Cuckoo Stone a Roman shrine once stood*

Leaving the Cuckoo Stone, my path led to an old track edged by wildflowers humming with bees and butterflies and bringing me out at the top of the Cursus. The Cursus is another huge earthwork showing nowadays as a crop mark – two bright green stripes in an otherwise darker landscape. If you compare my photograph with the one of the information board (below), I was standing at the opposite end. In my image, the end of the Cursus can just be made out on the far horizon almost two miles distant. The purpose of the Cursus is unknown but thought to be ceremonial as it is again aligned to the summer solstice. It is even older than Stonehenge having been constructed several hundred years earlier.

*The two-mile long Cursus now only shows as two grassy green stripes*

*The Cursus is better understood from this aerial* *photograph*

Another good track took me due south before turning west to Old King Barrows and then back south to New King Barrows. Before leaving the Cursus I stood to watch the visitors to Stonehenge some long way off and thinking how lucky I was to have all of this unseen history of the World Heritage Site to myself with only the song of skylarks as company. More than five thousand years separated me from the Neolithic people yet surely, they must have stood here too and seen a similar picture as they made their way to join others already arrived, a humbling thought.

*A distant Stonehenge can be clearly seen from the Cursus*

The Old and New King Barrows consist of two groups, each of seven burial mounds so fourteen in total, separated by Stonehenge Avenue which is only visible as another cropmark. The Avenue linked Stonehenge to the River Avon almost two miles away and was, perhaps, another route the Ancients would have taken to reach the stones. Despite their name, the Old and New King Barrows date from the same time period, and also around the same as Stonehenge.

*One of the prehistoric burial mounds at Old King Barrows*

It was by the barrows that I turned back towards Woodhenge, the last part of my relatively short but extraordinarily rich walk, rich both in its views and its wildlife, as well as its history. As if to bring me almost up-to-date in time, the sound of an old-fashioned binder in an adjoining field was busy bringing in the harvest. Not quite twenty-first century but a common sight less than a hundred years ago.

*Harvesting wheat the old-fashioned way*

The final part of my walk to Woodhenge will be published shortly.

To visit Stonehenge for free involves a walk not dissimilar to this one. Park in Durrington village and take the public bridleway path (where it meets Fargo Road) directly south to Stonehenge. The path passes the stones within yards of the public viewing path so you will still be separated from the stones. Public footpaths continue southwards, criss-crossing an area rich in more barrows and other ancient earthworks. With the help of an Ordnance Survey map it should be quite possible to make a longer, circular walk.

**Click on any of the images to enlarge**

Stonehenge – 5000 years later

Posted on March 2, 2013 by johnshortlandwriter

Stonehenge is one of the most important and instantly recognised ancient sites in the world yet those of us that live in the British Isles tend to take it rather for granted. Perhaps this is inevitable with anything that is on your doorstep, however it is strange that whereas many of us long to see (or perhaps have been lucky enough to have visited), say, the Pyramids of Giza or Machu Picchu, very many Brits have never visited Stonehenge. Perhaps if they had made the trip they would have been rather surprised at what they saw – and I don’t mean the majesty of the stones.

Over the years, the numbers of visitors to the stones has increased dramatically from twenty thousand a year in the 1920’s to over a million last year. As numbers increased so erosion and vandalism began to take its toll and access within the circle was stopped. Now it is only possible to enter the stones on special occasions, such as the summer solstice. This means that the majority of visitors are only able to walk around the perimeter of the henge. The memory of my first visit as a child is of running amongst the stones, of being able to touch them and to look up at their immense height – would I remember it now if I hadn’t had this intimate contact with them then?

To view a video of how the Stonehenge area is being transformed into a spectacular, world-class attraction, click the link here

Some years after that early visit and with numbers rapidly increasing a ‘temporary’ visitor centre was built in the late1960’s. This, along with inadequate car parking and lack of modern interpretation facilities makes the first impressions of this World Heritage Site poor, to say the least. Two busy main roads also pass closeby the stones destroying much of the quality of the landscape. Traffic jams are frequent.

Now this may all sound rather depressing (which it is) and a good reason to cross a visit to Stonehenge off your list of ‘must see’ places. Fortunately, despite everything, the grandeur of the stones remain and it is an awe-inspiring place to be, especially if you are able to arrive early in the day or when the stones are shrouded in mist.

Now the good news! After many years of discussion, Stonehenge is about to be ‘returned’
to its original landscape: the visitor centre, car parks and main road leading to them are being swept away and landscaped back to open grassland, giving the stones a greater sense of isolation. A new centre with educational and other facilities are being built further away and a low impact shuttle service will transport those visitors that don’t wish to – or are unable to – walk. This may be a few years away from completion but work has started. In the not-so-distant future, Stonehenge will have the facilites and landscape that such an important site deserves.

Stonehenge is part of a vast conservation area with over three hundred burial mounds and also includes the Avebury stone circle (link here). It is about 85 miles south-west of London. Although not as huge or as frequently visited we have many ancient stone monuments in the Cotswolds too. The Rollright Stones, a stone circle, photos below, are also 5000 years old, their shapes distorted and lichen covered with age. To read my earlier post about them, click here.

For information on visiting Stonehenge and its history (and how some of their huge stones are thought to have been dragged 150 miles from Wales), click here

"A Massive Piece of Granite"

Posted on August 6, 2010 by johnshortlandwriter

It is a family joke that whenever a large piece of stone is seen, one person asks “What is it?” and the other answers – slowly and after much deliberation and head scratching – “well, it’s a massive piece of granite”. For, many years ago, this was the only answer we got from an old countryman at an ancient stone burial chamber that towered above us.

Burial chambers, stone circles and other standing stones, which mostly date back 5000 years or so are reasonably common around Britain,and a surprising number of them are quite impressive. There are several scattered around the Cotswolds and I have written about our little known and little visited Old Soldier and also the very well known and very much visited stone circle, the Rollright Stones.

The Old Soldier

The Rollright Stones

Far more scarce and, perhaps even more impressive, are the stone ‘clapper’ bridges. These are often not as old as they look although, even these, were probably built the best part of a 1000 years ago. I find these bridges, which are mostly in the West Country on Dartmoor and Exmoor, just as impressive as Stonehenge, England’s world famous ancient stone monument. The clapper bridge in the photoographs below is at Postbridge, on Dartmoor, in the county of Devon. This clapper bridge was built to aid the transport of tin from moorland mines about 1200AD.

The ‘new’ bridge in the background, which carries the road and car traffic over the East Dart river is a mere upstart, having been built about 1780. In the photo below, I love the way the arch of the new bridge is framed by the ‘arch’ of the old one.

The granite slabs measure over 4 metres (13ft) long and are over 2 metres (6ft 6in) wide and weigh over 8 tons each. Despite this, over the centuries they have been swept away downstream by floods. Some have been rebuilt many times, others lost forever. However did they, without modern technology, transport them?
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The bridge just invites you to step onto it and it can be the starting point of many walks that lead across the open moorland. It was for me, a couple of months ago. On that walk, I found deserted settlements and the most incredible stone circle – unusual in that there were two circles side by side. I shall write more of this soon.

Even now, when a special occasion needs to be commemorated it is to stone that we often turn to. To my knowledge, no modern material is in common use to mark the burial place of a loved one: we mark our graves in a very similar way as our most distant ancestors, with stone slabs.

We also use stone to mark more joyous occasions. This standing stone was placed on Ibstone Common, high in the Chiltern Hills, to commemorate the millenium. A small thread that unites us through 5000 years of history and far into the future – a comforting thought.
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Speaking to a 5000 year old soldier…..

Posted on July 29, 2009 by johnshortlandwriter

I stopped off in Enstone today, a small village just a few miles north of Blenheim Palace. I wanted to meet the Old Soldier, the name locals give to the largest of the Neolithic stones that were placed here 4000-6000 thousand years ago.

All that remains of the burial chamber are these few stones but they are mighty impressive nevertheless. Hidden amongst trees, it is easy to pass them by even when you know they are close, despite the Old Soldier being 9ft high.

Our Cotswold landscape must have looked very different when these stones were placed here – and how did they place them with only manpower available? Of course, this is one of the big mysteries of Stonehenge, the world famous stone circle 2 hours drive away. Whereas Stonehenge gathers hundreds of visitors each day, hardly anyone calls in to pay their respects here and it feels a silent and lonely place.

Legend has it that if you cannot find the stones – and sometimes you can’t – the Old Soldier has gone to the village pub to quench his thirst. One assumes in human form which is a scary thought!

Old Mont lived just a mile from the stones in Fulwell, a tiny hamlet of no more than a dozen houses. The very end cottage, made out of our local, mellow stone was his house, now marked by a ‘blue’ plaque . The local shepherd has become quite a celebrity since his death some years ago: a story teller persuaded to put his tale into a book [Lifting the Latch] and his few possessions into the Woodstock museum. He would find his own fame far more surprising than meeting the Old Soldier down the pub and the hollyhocks flowering by his garden wall far more impressive!