I first set up Eternal Idol a few years ago with the aim of providing original information on Stonehenge and any excavations conducted in the landscape. The site’s been greatly enhanced by the many informative comments and links sent in by other people, so you can either enter a search for something of interest, or else you can look at the categories on the right of the site.
The posts that have attracted the most comments and information relate to contentious aspects of Stonehenge such as the Druids, the bluestones and the means by which they arrived at Stonehenge, and also Silbury Hill. I’ve conducted other investigations into missing altar stones, the inspiration for the Anglo-Saxon poem The Ruin and the setting for the remarkable temple and City of Apollo as described by Pytheas of Massilia in 350 BC. I’ve also written about the likelihood of there having been a Sentinel at Stonehenge in prehistory, and whether or not our ancestors considered the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
I’ll be posting material related to my book “The Missing Years of Jesus” for the foreseeable future, but I still aim to publish original material related to Stonehenge on this site at the same time, so anyone is still free to write in and contribute to any post they choose.
Otherwise, if you’re interested in Stonehenge, but you’re completely new to it, then I strongly recommend that you first have a good look at this Wikipedia entry on Stonehenge, which is excellent, because it gives a detailed but clear overview of the ruins and their history. There are also many very worthwhile links on the Wikipedia page, so again, I suggest that you look at the English Heritage site and go to their interactive map, which provides many excellent illustrations and photographs that help to put Stonehenge, its surrounding landscape and history into some kind of perspective. If you’d like a virtual tour of the inside of the monument, then click on this English Heritage link.
When you’ve done that, and if you’re still interested in Stonehenge, then by all means return to this site, if you wish. If you have an opinion or a view, then please feel free to share it with everyone else, while a degree in archaeology is most certainly not required in order to do this. Different people view the ruins in different ways, and it may well be that a fresh perspective will spark off a train of thought and enable us to glimpse this stunning monument through the eyes of the men and women who laboured so mightily to build it all those millennia ago.
The entire content of this site, going back to August 2006, is currently being amended, so please don’t write in to tell me that a picture’s missing, because I’m fully aware of this. However, if you feel you can contribute in any way at all, no matter how small, to our knowledge and understanding of Stonehenge, then please feel free to share your views and submit comments, links or pictures, which I’ll attend to as time allows. Thank you, and I hope you find something of interest to you here; as things currently stand, there’s an archive of 267 detailed and lengthy posts, many with maps and other illustrations, while there are also around 2,500 detailed comments or submissions, many containing news, views, links and other fascinating information.
Silbury Hill, by kind permission of Angie Lake
11 Responses to “Stonehenge”
Early Stonehenge map
Dear Mr. Price,
Congratulations on your fascinating book – “The Missing Years of Jesus”, I was put onto it by my son Bruce (late of Chapel House Monmouth school), he just over-lapped with you being five years younger. I have raced through it and intend to read it again more slowly and make notes. My church is St Mary’s Priory, Chepstow, and a small group of us meet regularly for Bible Study, etc; at the moment, we are doing the history of the Christian Church in Britain.
Pat Fleming, Mrs.
I have visited Stonehenge several times since 1974. I have often wondered why the English government does not move the roadways and parking lots from the site. Is it that difficult for the government to realize the importance of this site and redirect traffic from its location?
In addition, is there any effort to restore some of the fallen stones to their original upright position? If there is no dispute on a fallen stone’s original position, why isn’t it uprighted, using modern technology not to disturb the adjoining landscape? By repositioning only a few of these fallen stones, maybe more individuals will realize the unique importance of this site and focus on its preservation.
Hello William,
Thank you for writing in and it is always a pleasure to hear from someone who shares my love of the ruins. As for your question, I can do no better than refer you to the contents of this truly excellent piece by Simon Jenkins from 2006. I’ve provided numerous links to it over the years, but if anything, it gets better every time I read it.
The “Lundy Triangle” links neatly with Dyfed and was covered on the thread Tanith II http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=2761 which also referenced http://cura.free.fr/decem/06heath.html
William is the only one I’ve ever read that has proposed putting the stones that lay on the ground back into their original position. I’ve thought they should do that for years. Also, you never know what you might find under one of those stones, could be something’s there.
One more thing, Stonehenge was a very complicated work. One that I would think would take a written plan, or map. Does anyone think this ancient people might’ve had such a written diagram prior and during it’s being built?
Simon Jenkins from the Guardian has suggested rebuilding Stonehenge and so have quite a few others. As for the diagram, it seems logical that the design would have been a model carved in wood or perhaps chalk, or daubed on a hide, or scratched in the mud in some way. Carved chalk plaques have been found by the King Barrows, from memory, and there are pictures of them in Hengeworld and perhaps elsewhere.
Hi Dennis, it was great meeting you at Stonehenge this year; the Ancestor was a marvelous addition to the event. On the subject of lifting the fallen stones, I feel it would be a fitting tribute to the original builders to attempt this using only materials available to Neolithic peoples. This would include pine poles, ropes of nettle fibre and honeysuckle vines.
This would be a massive undertaking that could see much local input [perhaps involving army engineers]. This one would have English Heritage putting their hands over their eyes!.. he he .. still, it would be a wonderful project, and one I would be happy to participate in. You never know where it will lead…
All the best..Niall.
It’s a pleasure to hear from you, Niall, and it was a pleasure to meet you at the Solstice as well, so I look forward to more of the same.
I have studying symbols from all different ancient civilisation and many use these circular formations, yes alot used them for life and death ceremonies. But what if they reffer to the legends of inner earth . Thank You for your time
Care to comment?
The Stonehenge Blau Stones
Just been in correspondence with Geoff Kellaway, the first man to bravely stick his head above the parapet on the glacial transport theory for the bluestones.
He sent a paper in which he argues that the bluestones were never described as BLUE stones by the early visitors to Stonehenge, but that in the Middle Ages (ie around the time of Geoffrey of Monmouth and later) they might have been referred to in Ango-Saxon as BLAU stones — with the word “blau” meaning striking, different, or of unusual or striking appearance. This is interesting — I hadn’t come across this idea before!! Is anybody else familiar with it?
Of course, this would make sense, since the stones are not actually blue at all — they are not that different in colour from the sarsens. But it’s intriguing to think that from an early stage people might have recognized them as simply DIFFERENT.