Stonehenge #1

Stonehenge Sacred Landscape — An Overview

One piece in History’s gigantic jigsaw puzzle

Part of Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Construction began on this Neolithic sacred site approx 5,000 years ago. Image by © Linda Acaster 2023.

Standing close to an arterial road in Wiltshire, England, Stonehenge is the most iconic historical monument within the group of islands encompassing Britain and its western neighbour, Ireland.

It is found mentioned in documents from the Medieval period, and has been studied by antiquarians since at least the 17th century when John Aubrey drew the first detailed plan and questioned a series of depressions within its earth bank.

But it was not until later that such self-taught luminaries ceased being dazzled by the architecture of the Stones and began interrogating the closer, then the more distant landscape in which the monument stands.

For a start, in the shallow valley beneath the Stones, there’s the 1.7 mile (2.7km) long ‘Cursus’, misnamed in the 18th century as being the remains of a Roman racetrack. This had not been built because Stonehenge was close, more that Stonehenge was built close to the Cursus. Why?

Then there’s the ditched and banked ‘Avenue’, acting as a wide curving route to Stonehenge from the River Avon 1.5 miles (2.5km) to the south. Three-quarters of a mile to the north-east there’s the ‘Cuckoo Stone’, now lying prone below the…