Transcribed from the Brown & Co., Third (c1890?), edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

The Age of Stonehenge.

BY THE

REV. EDWARD DUKE,
M.A., F.G.S., &c.

THIRD EDITION .

SALISBURY: BROWN & CO.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.

PRICE THREEPENCE .

p. 2 PREFACE.

The first thought which is almost sure to present itself to the mind of a visitor to Stonehenge is this—can we reasonably fix its age?

The author of the accompanying little pamphlet has endeavoured to answer this question as far as, in his judgment, it admits of being answered.

Lake House, near Salisbury.

p. 3 The Age of Stonehenge.

Will the precise age of the erection of Stonehenge ever be ascertained?  It seems very unlikely that it ever will be.  Perhaps it is not desirable that it should be.  The mystery which enwraps it in this respect adds not a little to the imposing grandeur of those weather-beaten stones.  But though we cannot say exactly how old this wonderful structure is, we may, I think, say with confidence that it is not later than a certain era, i.e. , that when the Roman legions invaded our shores ( B.C. 55) Stonehenge was standing as now in the midst of Salisbury Plain.  To the proof of this I am wishful to draw attention, inasmuch as the post-Roman theory put forth by the late Mr. James Fergusson has obtained credence with not a few intelligent persons.

Mr. Fergusson’s well-known work, “Rude Stone Monuments,” contains much interesting information on the subjects of which he treats, and the facts which he adduces we may presume to be facts collected with care.  But this proves nothing as to the truth of the inferences which he deduces from his premises.  The observing faculty and the faculty for drawing correct conclusions do not always meet in the same individual, as was notably the case in the late talented Charles Darwin with respect to his physical evolution theory.  Fergusson confidently maintains, in the work to which I refer, that “Stonehenge was erected as a monument to the memory of the British chiefs treacherously slain by Hengist.”  He supposes that its building commenced about A.D. 466, and p. 4 may have been completed about A.D. 470.  And on what authority does he chiefly rely historically for this theory?  On the mediæval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote about A.D. 1140.  But what does he himself say of the credibility of this writer?  To quote his own words: “he was a fabulist of the most exuberant imagination” (p. 106), and again he says of him (p. 88), “he is a frail reed to rely upon”; and yet, strange to say, we find him building much on the uncorroborated statement of Geoffrey that Stonehenge was erected in memory of the slaughter of certain British chiefs.

But no less weak and inconclusive is his reasoning when he brings his reader within the area of Stonehenge.  He points attention to the fact that Sir R. C. Hoare had stated in his “Ancient Wilts,” I. p. 150:—“We have found in digging (within the circle) several fragments of Roman as well as coarse British pottery, part of the head and horns of deer and other animals, and a large barbed arrow-head of iron”; and he also mentions that Mr. Cunnington at an earlier date had discovered within the area some Roman pottery. [4] From this Mr. Fergusson infers that “the building must have been erected after the Romans had settled in this island.”  But what does the fact, assuming it to be a fact, that Roman pottery was found at Stonehenge, prove?  Not that the Romans, or their successors, were the builders, but simply what no one will question, that the Romans during p. 5 their stay in Britain, occupied this part of the country, and visited Stonehenge.  He omits in his argument, it should be observed, to take any notice of the fact that “ancient British pottery” was found at the same time with Roman within the temple.  Does not such an omission detract much from the fairness and force of his reasoning?  Moreover we find that Sir R. C. Hoare in his “Ancient Wilts” repeatedly mentions that in digging within what were undoubtedly ancient British camps in South Wilts, he met with Roman pottery as well as British.  What does this indicate?  Simply that while these earthworks had been originally constructed by our Celtic forefathers they were afterwards occupied, and in many instances re-formed, by the Romans.  It indicates thus much certainly, but nothing more, and similarly the finding Roman pottery at Stonehenge is no proof that the Roman people, or their successors, had any hand whatever in its construction.  Possibly it may have happened, though I admit that we have no evidence to offer on this point, that the Romano-British ladies were accustomed to have their picnics at Stonehenge, as we do now, and “as accidents will sometimes happen” an article or two of their pottery may have been broken, and have become gradually embedded in the ground, so as to mislead some of the learned archæologists of the present day.  Evidence drawn from objects found beneath the soil is usually very inconclusive.  As in this case, there may have been diggings at different times; stones we know have been upset; earth is apt to accumulate in the lapse of time; and objects once on the surface to sink down and become buried.  Time effects many such changes, and mistakes often arise from not bearing this sufficiently in mind.

But putting aside for the present the unsatisfactory evidence on which this theory is based, let us see whether the surrounding barrows have not something to say on the p. 6 question before us.  These barrows are, as everyone must have observed, more than usually numerous around Stonehenge.  There are about 300 within a radius of a mile and a-half.  They are, in fact, much more thickly conglomerated hereabouts than elsewhere on the plain.  This, I think I shall be able to show presently, is no accidental circumstance, but that it has a significant bearing on the age of this mysterious structure.

First, however, let us take notice of the contents of these particular barrows, and of the evidence thence deducible as to the era of their construction.  They are unquestionably pre-Roman.  They have all been opened, and nothing Roman, whether coins, or pottery, or ornaments, or weapons, has been found in any of them.  This we know on the authority of that very able and most careful barrow-opener, Sir R. C. Hoare, vide his “Ancient Wilts.”  In saying this, it must be borne in mind that we are speaking of the barrows which immediately surround Stonehenge.  In other parts of England, and indeed, in other parts of Wiltshire, there are tumuli of later age; but in this particular district they are all, without exception, of an era prior to the Roman occupation.

And now I need scarcely say that if only we can satisfactorily connect these barrows with Stonehenge, we shall be furnished with a clue to its age of no little value—not, indeed, to its precise or positive age, but to its age in relation to the period when the Romans occupied Britain.

Our question, then, is this—Does the position of the barrows in reference to Stonehenge, enable us to infer that they have been located with a special view to the temple which they surround so numerously?  In answering this question we may at once admit that no regular order of position is observable.  They do not appear to be placed p. 7 in concentric lines, or avenues.  This, however, will at once strike an observer, that the eminences rather than the depressions or hollows between the hills have been chosen as sites for these sepulchral mounds.  The instances are very rare indeed in which barrows are to be found in any of the numerous little valleys where they would be out of sight.

But more decided evidence than this is of course needed.  And for such evidence we have not far to seek.  The pedestrian may obtain it without any great difficulty.  Let him visit, as I have done myself, every barrow on the surrounding plain within the above-mentioned radius, and then mount to the summit of each, whether it happens to be a bowl or bell-shaped barrow, or any of the more elevated tumuli, and I can promise him a view, in almost every instance, of the old stones from the top.  There are indeed a few exceptions, but only of such a nature as in fact to “prove the rule.”  In some cases plantations, or similar modern intervening objects, hide the view.  One or two cases also I noticed in which a barrow in the foreground obstructed the view from one further back.  But this was not, as I think, that the later barrow-builders acted uncourteously towards the earlier ones, but simply that they did it inconsiderately—they did not notice that they were thus obstructing the line of view.  Again, there are other cases in which you do not perhaps get the view from the base of the barrow, but as you ascend to the top, to your surprise and pleasure you find the grand old stones suddenly burst into sight.  But do there still remain a few instances unaccounted for?  There are a few, but they are very few, and I do not think we need feel the slightest difficulty in explaining these exceptional cases.  Bear in mind that these barrows were the burying places, not of the common people, but of the chieftains and other distinguished persons, as is evidenced by their contents.  They thus represent in all probability a considerable lapse of p. 8 time, during which the deceased bodies were conveyed—some it may be from long distances—to this grand unfenced cemetery.  It is therefore very probable that the interments may have occupied a considerable number of years, and may have, in some instances, even preceded the time-honoured temple of Stonehenge.  But I again repeat that these exceptions are very few in number, nor do they in any degree shake the conclusion, which really is irresistible , that these said barrows do not occupy chance positions, but that the selection of the sites, as they became needed, was governed by a sacred feeling, such as even heathens may have, that they would wish the ashes of their beloved dead to repose in view of the temple where they worshipped in their lifetime.

But there still remains to be mentioned another fact which, added to what has gone before, seems to render the evidence in favour of the pre-Roman antiquity little short of demonstrative.  It is this.  On the western side of the temple there were formerly several barrows, now, I am sorry to say, obliterated by the ruthless plough, which were opened first by Dr. Stukeley, and afterwards re-opened by Sir R. C. Hoare, in one of which were found numerous fragments, not only of the “sarsens,” which would not have been so conclusive, but also of the so-called “blue stones,” i.e. , the igneous stones of the syenitic or green stone class, which could have been brought from nowhere else in the neighbourhood, and which therefore must have been chippings taken from the stones themselves, as they were being prepared for their places in the temple.  Sir R. C. Hoare says, with reference to one of these barrows:—“On removing the earth from over the cist” (and therefore from the very base of the barrow) “we found a large piece of one of the blue stones of Stonehenge, which decidedly proves that the adjoining temple was erected previous to the tumulus.”  He also says that “in opening the fine bell-shaped barrow p. 9 on the north-east of Stonehenge, we found one or two pieces of the chippings of these (blue) stones, as well as in the waggon tracks round the area of the temple.”  I need not point out the satisfactory evidence which all this brings to bear on the question before us.  The surrounding barrows are all pre-Roman, and therefore, for the reasons alleged, Stonehenge must be pre-Roman also, as being older, possibly much older, than the majority of the barrows themselves.

And now what shall we say more?  The grand old temple pleads for itself.  To assign to it the later origin would be to deprive it of its well-founded claim to take rank among the most interesting of all the relics of the ancient heathen world which have come down to us.  Thus dishonoured, it would sink down into the comparatively insignificant monument of a treacherous slaughter said to have been perpetrated in the neighbourhood about A.D. 450.  But can this be all the meaning there is in this mysterious structure, which has been viewed with astonishment and veneration by such numbers of persons through successive centuries?  Only think of the time and labour—the almost superhuman efforts—which it must have cost our forefathers to convey these ponderous stones to the spot, and then to shape and to set them up.  Such sustained exertion as this, so laborious and so costly, requires a motive to account for it.  And there is no motive we know of so powerful as what may be termed “the religious instinct.”  The force of this principle of human nature, even in its sadly corrupted state as it exists in the case of the ignorant and superstitious heathen, is nevertheless the strongest principle of action in the human breast.  We see it in the tenacity with which heathen idolaters cling to their ancestral deities, or, as in India, in the enormous sums of money which have been lavished by the Hindoos on the construction and adornment of their idolatrous temples.  Viewing Stonehenge, then, as a temple erected at a very p. 10 early period for the worship of the Sun, or Baal, we have what may be regarded as an adequate motive for all the time and labour which must have been expended in its construction, while, on the other hand, such a sufficient motive seems to be altogether wanting on any other supposition.  It may be added that the author of “Rude Stone Monuments,” while strenuously maintaining his own view, admits, with some degree of inconsistency, that “looking at the ground plan of Stonehenge there is something singularly templar in its arrangements.”  It is also worth noticing that the utter absence of anything like ornamentation in this building is itself a very strong argument against its Roman or post-Roman age.  For we shall look in vain to find amongst the acknowledged remains of Roman architecture any example of such severe unadorned simplicity as we have here.

May we not then be suffered to retain our old belief that this is unquestionably a relic of Pagan antiquity of surpassing interest, visibly testifying as it does amidst the solitude and silence of the surrounding plain to the state in which our Celtic or Belgic forefathers were before the light of Christian truth visited our shores, and brought with it the civilization, and other inestimable blessings, which we now happily possess.

Bennett Brothers, Printers, Journal Office, Salisbury.

Footnotes.

[4] It is due to the memory of that very able pioneer of discoveries in our Wiltshire barrows—the late Mr. W. Cunnington, F.S.A., of Heytesbury, who is here referred to—to explain that though he found some fragments of Roman pottery among the loose earth which had slipped into the cavity caused by the fall of the great Trilithon in 1797, he did not consider that this pottery had been deposited before the erection of the stones, but that it must have found its way into the ground afterwards, from some cause or other.  That this was Mr. Cunnington’s belief is quite certain from a letter of his on the subject, dated Oct. 2, 1801, and which is, I believe in the possession of his grandson, Mr. W. Cunnington, F.G.S.