Size mattered as origins of Stonehenge’s biggest slabs revealed

Archaeologists have finally been able to reveal the provenance of Stonehenge’s grandest lumps of rock.

Sarsen stones at Stonehenge have been traced to the West Woods, inset, on the Marlborough Downs. Picture: English Heritage

The debate about the provenance of Stonehenge’s grandest lumps of rock had been raging for at least four centuries.

Now, thanks to the recovery of a chunk of the monument that had been lost for decades, archaeologists have finally been able to reveal where they came from.

The research shows the giant sarsen stones were gathered, some 4500 years ago, from the West Woods, a site covering 6.5sq m on the edge of Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire.

It is about 25km north of Stonehenge and it seems likely its proximity made it attractive: the biggest sarsens stand 9m tall and weigh about 25 tonnes.

Susan Greaney, a historian for English Heritage, said: “We can now say that when sourcing the sarsens, the overriding objective was size — they wanted the biggest, most substantial stones they could find and it made sense to get them from as near by as possible.”

The breakthrough was made possible by the discovery of a metre-long core of rock drilled from a stone during a restoration in 1958. The project had involved three sarsens that had fallen more than 150 years earlier being hauled upright and made stable.

Robert Phillips worked for a company asked to drill through one of the stones so it could be pinned into place with a metal bracket.

He was allowed to take the core home. It hung on his wall, in a tube, for 60 years or so, accompanying him to Florida when he moved there. When Mr Phillips recently passed away his family offered to return the core. This gave researchers the chance to analyse material from the interior of a monument closely guarded as a World Heritage site.

David Nash of the University of Brighton, who led the study, published in the journal Science Advances, said: “We were asked whether we’d like to have some. We said yes very quickly.”

There are thought to have been about 80 sarsens at Stonehenge originally and 52 remain. They include the 15 stones of Stonehenge’s central horseshoe, the uprights and lintels of the outer circle, as well as outlying stones.

While the smaller bluestones had been traced to specific locations in the Preseli Hills in Wales, the source of the larger sarsens had been impossible to accurately identify until now.

“To be able to pinpoint the area that Stonehenge’s builders used to source their materials around 2500BC is a real thrill,” Ms Greaney said.

“Now we can start to understand the route they might have travelled.”

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