UK Edition
I visited Stonehenge for the first time in 50 years – but was it still a fun day out?
As the British Museum's Stonehenge exhibition opens, our writer visits the site for the first time since he was a youngster
I follow a path through a field towards the Cursus, a strange earthwork over a mile long, barely discernible in rough chalky pasture. Through headphones I learn that it was once thought to be the remains of a racetrack constructed in Roman times but is in fact far older, predating the stone circle of Stonehenge by over 1,000 years. Then I’m wandering beside the Cursus burial mounds – or barrows – heading towards ‘Stonehenge Avenue’, the ceremonial approach to the ancient temple from the Neolithic settlement at Durrington Walls.
Am I going the right way? I wonder, even though the stone circle is visible ahead, up the gently sloping field in which livestock sometimes graze. I look at the satellite tracking blue dot on my phone to check that I am on the route. I can almost hear a Stone Age ancestor sigh. “Look! Use your eyes! The stones are there ahead of you! Put that thing away.”
If he despised my need for a smartphone and headphones through which I’m listening to commentary on an app I’ve downloaded, I like to think that at least he’d be impressed by my Thermos flask of hot water from which I’ve just poured a warming cuppa. A chill wind is whipping across the grassy plain. I’m not sure how I’d fare dressed in animal skins.
I walk on and arrive at a double row of fences, the closest one barbed wire, then a gap of some four feet, then another fence, behind which stands a man with a walkie-talkie. It feels like a threatening border with a strip of no-man’s-land that might well be mined. It’s not the warmest welcome to what is thought to be Stonehenge’s most auspicious, original entrance, next to the ‘heel stone’, in alignment with the sunset of winter solstice and the sunrise of summer’s longest day.
“The barbed wire fence is to keep sheep away,” explains the ‘guard’ to me across the border. The other fence is to keep out non-ticketed humans. I can either follow the barbed wire fence to the left and then over a stile onto the public footpath – the gap between fences – or, if I have a ticket, I can walk to the right, to the modern day public entrance of this, our most famous prehistoric monument.
At 59, I’m old enough to remember clambering over the stones before they were roped off in 1978 to protect them from hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. I must have been about eight when I visited with my family. I don’t recall much apart from the enormous heft of the quartz-rich sarsens towering over me. We probably did nothing more damaging – or so we thought – than sitting on a fallen lintel eating sandwiches. We certainly didn’t take chisels with us as Victorian visitors did, chipping off souvenirs. But there are fragile rare lichens growing on the stones that could be easily damaged by too many hands or bottoms. The crunch of feet on gravel was impacting the archaeology too.
My main memory, country bumpkin that I was, is of the excitement of walking under a road. The site was accessed via an underpass below the A344 on which traffic roared very close to the monument. That’s all changed now. In 2013, some of the A344 was grassed over and the car park and visitors’ centre moved over a mile away, restoring relative peace and adding a shuttle bus trip or half-hour walk along the road – or through sheep-grazed fields – to the stone circle.
It’s a vast improvement that makes the wider landscape, rich with prehistoric earthworks, part of the attraction. Another major road, the contentious A303 that may possibly be tunnelled underground in future, is still within sight of the megaliths. However, that seems comparatively distant and discreet compared to how traffic on the A344 used to hurtle by so close you could lob an apple core into the circle from a passing car. Not that I ever did.
I head towards the modern-day tourist entrance. I pass the remains of my fondly remembered underpass, now a staff canteen where stewards and security guards in high viz jackets and walkie-talkies retreat to warm up. Nearby, in the field, a man is sketching. His paint-spattered coat intrigues. He is the artist Kurt Jackson, stopping off with his wife Caroline, on their way from Cornwall to Oxford for the opening of a new exhibition. “All these fences should come down and the grazing stopped and the landscape rewilded,” he says. “There’s some wildlife – we’ve seen skylarks and fieldfares – but there could be much more.” The couple haven’t bought tickets, simply walked along the public footpath. Motorhomes are also parked up for free on a public byway. “The New Age traveller connection with Stonehenge is an important part of its history, dating back over 50 years already,” he says.
But the real ancient history dating back 5,000 years is revealed in the visitors' centre, through the headphone commentary or – the old-fashioned way – by chatting to knowledgable staff which, on a day of few visitors, is easy. Recent research gathered from laboratory analysis of bones suggests that Bronze Age people gathered from far and wide with their herds of livestock to feast here. "The stones were more connected to death and the midwinter solstice rather than with midsummer celebration," says one attendant, Chris, wrapped up warmly. Mike Parker Pearson, professor of British later prehistory at University College London, also suggests that the smaller bluestones in the inner circle were relocated over 200 miles from a previous stone circle in the Preseli Hills in Wales, a kind of flat-pack pre-fabricated monument.
Peering from a distance of about 30ft – the closest you can get – the stones appear fairly uniformly grey and lichen-speckled but thousands of years ago, the large sarsen stones would have been creamy and sparkling in the sun and the bluestones would have been green-blue, says another attendant, Jonny Sanders, in white-rimmed Ray-bans. I find myself wishing I’d brought binoculars to look closer at the lichens, the colour, the graffiti (including, apparently, the carved name ‘Wren’, said to be that of Sir Christopher Wren) and even to get a better look at an obvious reinforcement of concrete on one stone. (There have been various restoration works over the centuries, including resurrecting fallen stones.)
If only I’d appreciated the freedom I had to explore within this ancient architecture 50 years ago. “You can book an early morning or evening visit when we take a maximum of 30 people at a time among the stones,” consoles Sanders. That costs £47.
Other tourists I meet, some of the 400 or so visiting on that cold January day, are not disappointed, however. “We got closer to the stones than we thought we would,” says Michelle Bentley, visiting from California with husband, John. “The sheep [grazing adjacent to the site] were also a plus! We’re only used to seeing cattle,” she says. “We’re just in awe of this place: the mystery of it all.”
I do finally get to touch the stones, or at least appear to do so, by leaning against a large photograph of one of the ‘trilithons’, the name for two standing stones with a lintel. The photograph is a backdrop displayed as a selfie-opportunity in the visitors’ centre, complete with outlined footprints directing where to stand and an Instagram hashtag #yourstonehenge. My make-believe Stone Age companion sighs again.
Then it’s off to the shop where ‘Stonehenge Rocks’ emblazons sweatshirts. Countless items are decorated with an image of the ancient monument, including 1,000-piece jigsaws.
Stonehenge is still a puzzle. Did Merlin magic it there? The Romans? Celtic Druids? Neolithic and Bronze Age people? How? Why? Theories are still evolving. Learning about the centuries of archaeological finds enhances a visit. The new British Museum exhibition in London will boost numbers to this site in rural Wiltshire, easing the pain of a 70 per cent drop in visitors during the pandemic.
After an over-priced snack in the cafe, which, sadly, serves everything in disposable tableware, I head towards the bus stop to wait for the 20-minute double-decker journey to Salisbury. There is just one other passenger, Hsuan-Ling Chiu, a Taiwanese student. She had initially been disappointed that the stones, the tallest of which measures nearly 22ft above ground, seemed so small. “I thought they’d be much taller. I think all the photos they take are from low down,” she says. Despite that initial setback she stayed until the last bus at 5pm (in winter), having arrived at midday. “The best thing was when the sun came out and shone through the stones and they really came alive.”
For the first time that day, my ancient imaginary friend nods approvingly.
How to do it
Stonehenge is open daily and costs £19.50 for adult off-peak entrance.
Morning and evening viewings, limited to 30 maximum, allow you to wander among the stones for 45 minutes. The ‘Stone Circle Experience’ costs £47 per person and must be booked in advance.
If travelling by public transport, a combined return bus and entrance ticket costs £32.50, including optional entrance to Old Sarum. Buses depart from outside Salisbury train station.
Accommodation in Salisbury was provided by b&b caboosesalisbury.com, conveniently located near station and bus stop. Doubles from £85.
The world of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum runs from February 17 to July 17.