Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites

Stonehenge Avenue is an ancient avenue on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England. It is part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites UNESCO World Heritage Site. Discovered in the 18th century, it measures nearly 3 kilometres, and connects Stonehenge with the River Avon. It was built during the Stonehenge 3 period of 2600 to 1700 BCE. Along some of its length, the avenue is aligned with the sunrise of the summer solstice, suggesting a time of most frequent use. In 2013 a section of A344 road was closed, which had cut through the avenue close to Stonehenge. After the road surface was removed, it was shown that although the avenue's banks had been sliced off, the filled-in ditches were still in evidence, confirming that the avenue continued through to the stone circle.At the end of the avenue, a ring of pits, referred to as Bluestonehenge, was discovered in 2009. No monoliths were found, and stone chips which were assumed to be of bluestone were later found to bear no relation to the bluestones at Stonehenge.Natural ice age grooves called periglacial stripes are present in the ground underneath the avenue. Mike Parker Pearson of the Stonehenge Riverside Project believes that the avenue was inspired by, and built over the top of, this existing natural formation of parallel rills which had a significant astronomical alignment. The presence of ridges and gullies that happened to line up with the solstice directions may have been venerated, leading the Neolithic people to later build Stonehenge at this particular site.The avenue, along with Stonehenge itself, is a scheduled monument, first designated in the 1882 act which was the earliest legislation to protect British archaeological sites.

The Aubrey holes are a ring of 56 chalk pits at Stonehenge, named after seventeenth-century antiquarian John Aubrey. They date to the earliest phases of Stonehenge in the late fourth and early third millennium BC. Despite decades of argument and analysis, their purpose is still unknown, although an astronomical role has often been suggested. Whilst visiting the monument in 1666, Aubrey noticed five circular cavities in the ground and noted them in his records. These features were ignored or not seen by the later antiquarians to investigate the site, and it was not until the 1920s during the work carried out by Colonel William Hawley that Hawley's assistant Robert Newall identified a ring of pits he named in honour of Aubrey and his early survey. The depressions seen by Aubrey himself are more likely to have been different features from those that now bear his name. Mike Pitts in a 1981 article in Nature pointed out that the holes had been backfilled thousands of years before Aubrey visited the site. The presence of later cremation burials and sarsen stone chips in the holes' upper fills supports this. That none of the other antiquarians who visited the site noticed any such holes implies that they were not permanent features either. Pitts argues that they were more likely to be the cavities left by features that had recently been removed. He has suggested that perhaps further megaliths stood at Stonehenge which occupied these other holes and are now lost.

The Heel Stone is a single large block of sarsen stone standing within the Avenue outside the entrance of the Stonehenge earthwork in Wiltshire, England. In section it is sub-rectangular, with a minimum thickness of 2.4 metres (7 ft 10 in), rising to a tapered top about 4.7 metres (15 ft) high. Excavation has shown that a further 1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in) is buried in the ground. It is 77.4 metres (254 ft) from the centre of Stonehenge circle. It leans towards the southwest nearly 27 degrees from the vertical. The stone has an overall girth of 7.6 metres (25 ft) and weighs about 35 tons. It is surrounded by the Heelstone Ditch.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli (burial mounds).Archaeologists believe that Stonehenge was constructed in several phases from around 3100 BC to 1600 BC, with the circle of large sarsen stones placed between 2600 BC and 2400 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the bluestones were given their current positions between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as early as 3000 BC.One of the most famous landmarks in the United Kingdom, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected scheduled monument since 1882, when legislation to protect historic monuments was first successfully introduced in Britain. The site and its surroundings were added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage; the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another 500 years.

The Stonehenge Free Festival was a British free festival from 1974 to 1984 held at the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in England during the month of June, and culminating with the summer solstice on or near 21 June. It emerged as the major free festival in the calendar after the violent suppression of the Windsor Free Festival in August 1974, with Wally Hope providing the impetus for its founding, and was itself violently suppressed in 1985 in the Battle of the Beanfield, with no free festival held at Stonehenge since although people have been allowed to gather at the stones again for the solstice since 1999. By the 1980s, the festival had grown to be a major event, attracting up to 30,000 people in 1984. The festival attendees were branded as hippies by the British press. This, along with the open drug use and sale, contributed to the increase in restrictions on access to Stonehenge, and fences were erected around the stones in 1977. The same year, police resurrected a moribund law against driving over grassland in order to levy fines against festival goers in motorised transport. By 1984 police–festival relations were relaxed with only a nominal police presence required.

The Q and R Holes are a series of concentric sockets which currently represent the earliest known evidence for a stone structure on the site of Stonehenge. Beneath the turf and just inside the later Sarsen Circle is a double arc of buried stoneholes, the only surviving evidence of the first stone structure (possibly a double stone circle) erected within the centre of Stonehenge (Figs.1 & 2) and currently regarded as instigating the period known as Stonehenge Phase 3i. This phase may have begun as early as 2600 BC, although recent radiocarbon dates from samples retrieved from one of the sockets in 2008 during excavations by Darvill and Wainwright suggest a date of around 2400 to 2300 BC. They made a partial excavation of Q Hole 13, where 'associations with Beaker pottery' were noted.Although first encountered by William Hawley in the 1920s, it was Richard Atkinson who formally identified and named these irregular settings in 1954: "In choosing this designation, I had in mind John Aubrey’s frequent use, as a marginal note…of the phrase 'quaere quot' – 'inquire how many' – which seemed appropriate to the occasion". Their place at the beginning of the stone monument phase has been recognized from their stratigraphic relationships: in places they were cut through by both the settings of the later and still partly surviving Bluestone Circle, and also by a stonehole dug for one of the uprights of the Sarsen Circle.

The Altar Stone is a recumbent central megalith at Stonehenge in England, dating to Stonehenge phase 3i, around 2600 BCE. It is identified as Stone 80 in scholarly articles. Its name probably comes from a comment by Inigo Jones who wrote: ‘... whether it might be an Altar or no I leave to the judgment of others’.

The Station Stones are elements of the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge. Originally there were four stones, resembling the four corners of a rectangle that straddles the inner sarsen circle, set just inside Stonehenge's surrounding bank. Two stood on earth mounds at opposing corners, one corner broadly in the north of the site and one in the south. The mounds are called the North and South barrows although they never contained burials. The ring ditches surrounding these barrows respect the presence of Stonehenge's encircling bank indicating that they postdate this feature. The other two corners of the rectangle are occupied by the two surviving stones which are undressed sarsens. Their installation at the monument dates to sometime in Stonehenge phase 3, perhaps around 4,000 years ago. Various astronomical alignments have been suggested for the stones, all involving other features at the site. As they cannot be said with certainty to have been contemporaneous with other stones or posts at Stonehenge, archaeoastronomical theories regarding their function have been treated with scepticism by mainstream archaeology. Although described as forming a rectangle, the two stones and the two stone settings can also be described as representing two opposite facets of an octagon. This suggests that they were laid out to a geometric plan and challenges the theory that the positions were astronomically determined.

Records of archaeological excavations at the Stonehenge site date back to the early 17th century.

The Stonehenge road tunnel is a planned tunnel in Wiltshire, England, drawn up by National Highways to upgrade the A303 road. It would move the A303 into a tunnel under the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, completing the removal of traffic begun with the 2012 closure of the A344 road. The wider project was designed to improve the landscape around the monument and to improve safety on the A303, and was part of proposals to change the site in other ways including moving the visitors' centre. In 2020, the project was expected to cost £1.7 billion.

The Stonehenge Landscape is a property of The National Trust, located on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England. The estate (formerly known as Stonehenge Historic Landscape and before that as Stonehenge Down) covers 2,100 acres (850 ha) surrounding the neolithic monument of Stonehenge, which is administered by English Heritage. Much of the land is designated open access by the Trust, including the fields immediately around Stonehenge and other fields that become available as part of the chalk grassland reversion project (see below). Stonehenge itself is in the care of English Heritage, having been given to the nation in 1918 by Cecil and Mary Chubb, who had bought it three years previously from the Antrobus family.Much of the land surrounding the stones was acquired in 1927 after a public appeal was launched to prevent further development on the fields around the monument. The successfully purchased land was given to the National Trust for the benefit of the nation. Shortly afterwards such structures as cottages and an old World War I aerodrome were removed from the immediate vicinity of the stones. There are two memorials to different fatal flying accidents in the area. Eustace Loraine and Staff Sergeant Wilson were killed in 1912 near to the new Stonehenge Visitors' centre. Major Hewetson was killed in a flying accident near Fargo Wood in July 1913. Later the Trust acquired more land, principally after the purchase of an adjacent farm in the early 21st century. The land owned by the Trust comprises almost one third of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, and contains nearly 400 ancient monuments (most of them scheduled). These monuments include the enormous earthwork known as the Stonehenge Cursus, the Avenue, Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, as well as numerous burial mounds known as barrows. The estate also includes some of the Nile Clumps, large clumps of trees on arable farmland, said to represent ship positions at the Battle of the Nile. This is said to form a large memorial to Horatio Nelson, created by a local landowner after Nelson's death. During the 1970s and 1980s, the estate was the scene of the Stonehenge Free Festival. Damage to monuments such as the Cursus barrows was one of the reasons that the festival was banned in 1985. As part of the World Heritage Site Management Plan for Stonehenge, some 340 hectares of the land will revert to chalk grassland by 2011. The scheme (one of the largest reversion schemes of its kind in Europe) will turn over much of the estate to permanent pasture, and allow for increased open access around the area. At present some 112 hectares have reverted and, along with the existing grassland, are used as public open access as well as animal grazing.

The Stonehenge Cursus (sometimes known as the Greater Cursus) is a large Neolithic cursus monument on Salisbury plain, near to Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England. It is roughly 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) long and between 100 metres (330 ft) and 150 metres (490 ft) wide. Excavations in 2007 dated the construction of the earthwork to between 3630 and 3375 BCE, several hundred years before the earliest phase of Stonehenge in 3000 BC. The cursus, along with adjacent barrows and the nearby 'Lesser Cursus' are part of the National Trust's Stonehenge Landscape property, and is within the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site.