Stonehenge: Meaning and Mystery

Have you visited Stonehenge lately?  Was your visit as dismal as Bill Bryson’s trip, humorously described in his book that we heard an extract from early on – Notes from a Small Island?  After eleven minutes staring gloomily at the stones amidst the crowds he wanted nothing more than to get back on the bus to Salisbury.  I pass Stonehenge every month when I drive to Somerset to visit my mum and it’s the road that I drive on that causes Stonehenge at least some of its problems.  The A303 is busy and the constant roar of traffic filing past cannot help to create a positive atmosphere for viewing an ancient monument.

It was a different experience hundreds of years ago.  William Stukeley, an 18th century antiquarian, wrote of his approach to Stonehenge, “From a distance, its appearance is stately.  As you advance nearer, the greatness of its contour fills the eye in an astonishing manner.  When you enter the building and cast your eyes around the yawning ruins, you are struck into an ecstatic reverie, which none can describe, and they can only be sensible of it that feel it.”

John Constable described Stonehenge as “a mighty enigma on the wilderness of Salisbury Plain” and William Blake pictures it as the work of the giant Albion who stands above it with his stone working tools, giving a sense of England as a chosen, and divinely inspired, land.

The archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes suggests that “every age has the Stonehenge it deserves or desires”.  In 21st century Britain we certainly face assorted dilemmas in managing such ancient monuments.  Many of us yearn for a sense of connection with our ancient past.  Yet there are so many of us that we may all too easily, by our very presence, destroy the atmosphere that draws us to such sights in the first place. Stonehenge, as a scheduled ancient monument, is owned by the Crown and cared for by English Heritage – and looking after it is a problem.  Wouldn’t most of us like to visit such places alone or with a few selected companions?  Instead you have to queue even to get into the car park on busy days and I have never driven past without there being several coaches parked in the car park.  Stonehenge has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986 and attracts visitors from around the world – just under one million visitors a year according to English Heritage.  For such a popular attraction to have such poor facilities to welcome visitors does seem a missed opportunity.  Bill Bryson expresses this with characteristic irony when he writes:

“This is, after all, merely the most important prehistoric monument in Europe and one of the dozen most visited tourist attractions in England, so clearly there is no point in spending foolish sums making it interesting and instructive”.

But there is a plan to build a new visitor centre and to close part of a road in order to make the site a little more like the grassland plain it was originally built in.  Sadly there is little hope now that the once planned tunnel to hide the road beneath Salisbury Plain can ever be afforded.

Meanwhile, some very interesting archaeological exploration has been taking place in the surrounding area – for there are hundreds of other prehistoric sites within 2km of Stonehenge.  Most are much less obvious sites, and because of that they have been less disturbed and so new discoveries can still be made beneath their covering soil.  For example, the Stonehenge Riverside Archaeological Project discovered that another bluestone henge had been sited near the end of what’s known as the avenue of stones, which connects Stonehenge with the River Avon.  This whole area is a wondrously complex site of ancient remains.  At Durrington Walls, just a few miles away there are remains of massive timber circular buildings; then there is Silbury Hill – at 130feet high, the largest human made mound in Europe, with close by the, to my mind, far more atmospheric stone circle of Avebury – with its circle twice the diameter of Stonehenge.

It’s hardly surprising that ever since visitors reached Stonehenge in any great numbers there have been endless theories about its purpose and origins.  Built by giants, aliens, people from the Continent or Egypt; constructed by Druids or by Merlin and his friend King Arthur or by beings from Atlantis?  We can take our pick of these creative ideas but perhaps we need to turn to archaeologists for more grounded theories.  Most recent research shows that the site was developed in at least three distinct phases over thousands of years – starting with a large ditch and timber henge in around 3200BCE, in the Neolithic Period – the late stone age, when farming settlements had been established.  In the second phase of Stonehenge’s construction, the great bluestones were brought from Wales — perhaps around 2900BCE, and in a third, thousand year phase, the most complex stone work was erected – these great lintels in the outer circle with an inner horseshoe shape and a further structure re-using the bluestones.  This last phase of construction lasted till about 1600BCE in the early Bronze Age and also saw the creation of that mile and a quarter long Avenue which connects Stonehenge with the River Avon.

This was never one project – its meaning and use changed over time – and it seems likely that it was never finished.  But we do know two of the most likely ways in which Stonehenge was used – though since all this happened in pre-history – before things were written down – every conclusion we draw in a way comes from an intriguing meeting of our own humanity with the stones themselves.  Pre-historians ask themselves ‘what might these monuments say about the many people who worked so hard to build them over thousands of years?’  And we can ask ‘what might these monuments say of us?’

Stonehenge was, it seems likely, built for both ritual and cosmic purposes.  Much is said of its astronomical alignments – that a particular stone, the heel stone, is touched by the dawning sun on the summer solstice.  A similar alignment occurs at the winter solstice too.  The people who built this stone circle were sophisticated in their observations of the heavens above them and probably sensed a connection with the cosmos that is hard to imagine today.  Mircea Eliade – a renowned professor of the history of religion writes that in archaic astronomy man felt “himself indissolubly connected with the cosmos and the cosmic rhythms”.

I wonder how you feel when you look up into the night sky?  Does it touch you to realise how very tiny our planet is in the vast reaches of space?  There is something so very universally human about staring up at the stars in wonder.  Perhaps that’s why I so like the quotation we might soon have on our notice board outside on the street – Oscar Wilde’s comment that “we are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars”.

So Stonehenge was built with a sense of awe for the cosmos.  It was also seemingly built for ritual function – specifically people’s relationship with those who had died. It dealt with the essential human condition of knowing that we die, that our lives are finite.  For ancient people a belief in a spirit realm where the ancestors lived on seems to have been likely – places like Stonehenge then were built in order to recognise and celebrate the connection with the ancestors in this other realm. Mircea Eliade writes that the “ideas of perenniality and of continuity between life and death are apprehended through the exaltation of the ancestors as identified, or associated, with stones”. The latest archaeology in the area of Stonehenge suggests that the circle was primarily connected with rituals to do with death, that human remains were brought by boat along the River Avon and processed along the stone avenue and that a few remains were cremated and buried within the henge itself.  The stones with their solidity and rootedness in the earth have such a sense of permanence – they will outlive us all. And the earth and the moon keep turning and the stars appear at night and the sun rises and sets following a rhythm that was noted by those people of ages long past.  Meanwhile here in 21st century London we are in the midst of an artistic and sporting feast as the Olympics, Paralympics and their accompanying Cultural Olympiad get into full swing. Until 1952 Olympic medals were awarded for the arts but now we have a far more eclectic array of cultural treats to entertain us.

High on my list is Jeremy Deller’s piece called Sacrilege, which is touring Britain, and is the inspiration for the theme of today’s address.  He has created a replica of Stonehenge as a bouncy castle and both children and adults are invited to jump upon this replica of an ancient monument in various parks and municipal gardens around the country.  How delightful an idea is that – when Stonehenge itself is fenced off to protect it from the public and from some people’s uncontrollable desire to carve their names upon its ancient stone, we can instead bounce on a life size model of it.  Perhaps this is the Stonehenge that our era both ‘deserves’ and needs – for we live in a crowded land and we cannot all visit an ancient site like Stonehenge and have deep and meaningful experiences there. But through an artistic project such as this perhaps we can reclaim Stonehenge as an idea, an image, to be enjoyed by everyone. Sport for all; art for all; worthy aims I think when you live in a crowded land.

Rev. Sarah Tinker

Sermon – 12th August 2012