STONEHENGE, a celebrated monument of antiquity in Salisbury Plain, six miles distant from that city. The particular spot on which it stands is in the lordship of West or Little Ambresbury in the possession of the duke of Queensberry. The soil is chalky, and perfectly hard; so that the vast numbers of coaches and horses, which almost daily bring visitors to view this celebrated pile, have not been able to obliterate the track of the banks and ditches. It is situated near the summit of a hill, to which there is a very gentle ascent from the lower ground. The whole is inclosed with a circular ditch; which having passed, you ascend 35
yards before you come to the work itself; and the distance of the verge of the ditch within-side quite round to the building, is equal to the diameter of the building itself. The whole fabric consisted of four circles, or rather ovals, of stones, the most considerable of which had ten uprights, and five architraves or imposts, making up five trilitons, each triliton consisting of two uprights and one impost, which locked them together at the top by tenons and mortises. These trilitons are not all of the same height, but each of them raised its head or impost somewhat higher as it drew nearest to that before which the altar is judged to have stood, and which appears to have been not only the highest, but finest, both for the smoothness and beauty of the stones. The height of these trilitons, with their architraves or cornices, is computed, at a medium, to be 24 feet, for there is no coming at an exact dimension in a work so decayed by time and weather; the uprights being between 20 and 21 feet high, and lessening a little upwards to the top, and the cornice computed about three feet and an half, making up the complement of 24 feet. These imposts, on the outward face, bore the same sweep with the oval which they composed; but on the inside within a straight line. They seem likewise to have been somewhat broader on the top than at the bottom, so that their sides bear a little slant downwards, whether to preserve them the better from the weather, or to make up the shortening which is caused by their elevation from the sight. The gradual ascent of these three orders, as they may be termed, of trilitons, is 13, 14, and 15 druidish cubits. The breadth of each triliton is computed, in a medium, about 10 cubits of the same measure, and is consequently the length at least of the impost. Each upright is about 3 feet 9 nine inches thick, and twice that, i. e. 7 feet and an half in breadth, or 4 cubits and an half druidish. Each triliton which composes this oval cell stands at such convenient distance from the other, as to yield a beautiful prospect into it; which is not a little heightened by the space which stands between the two uprights, and which widens upwards as these lessen in their breadth, and form an oval from its two centres, whose longest radius is 15, and shortest 12, druidish cubits; so that the ellipsis is formed by a line of 60 cubits, which being joined at the two ends, and turned round the two centres, give a diameter of 30 cubits at the longest, and 25 at the shortest, 5 cubits being the supposed distance between the two centres. Within this grand oval is another, of much lesser thickness and finer stones. This circle (together with the long stone now broken, which is supposed to have been the altar, and is of a darkish-blue marble, such as is often set upon common altar-tombs, and about 16 feet in length) consists of 20 stones, the greatest part of which are broken and mangled; but not so much as to hinder a curious observer from recovering the order in which they stood, though their use and design is hard to be guessed at. Another circle or oval of 40 stones surrounded the cell or adytum at a proper distance. These were likewise of a much lesser size; after which one comes out to the greatest or outer circle, composed of 30 stones, likewise harder, and somewhat of a pyramidal form. It seems as if the founders had wisely provided, that their lesser bulk should
Stonchenge should be compensated by their solidity. The difference between this outward circle and that of the cell or adytum consisted in this, that the architraves of the trilitrons of the latter did not touch one another, but preserved the same distance with the two uprights on which they were locked; whereas, in the former or outward circle, the standers were joined by a continued cornice. Each stander or upright here had two tenons, at equal distances on the top, by which the two imposts were locked by their mortises, and so continued quite round in the form of a crown or cornice. The whole was surrounded by a vallum or deep ditch at a proportionate distance, as we have hinted above; and this, with the grand avenue and the gradual ascent up to the fabric, afforded a noble prospect, both as you advanced towards it, and much more when you viewed from it all the champaign country round it.
According to the unthinking vulgar, these stones were brought hither by magic, by the help of demons, or by giants, either of which were readily enough supposed able to bring them upon their backs from Africa; whilst the wiser sort rather imagined them to be fictitious, and cast from some such composition as sand and mortar and the like, and hardened by the weather. This notion, however, has been disproved, though to the great detriment and disfiguring of the stones themselves, and the endangering of the structure.
These stones, rough and battered as they have been by these pretended curiosities, as well as by a long series of ages, appear to have been originally smoothed by the chisel, at least as far as they stand above ground; for as to that part which lies buried in the earth, it shows itself, upon digging round it, to be in its primitive roughness; and as it was dug up out of the quarry, or, more probably, as they were found lying on the surface of the ground in great numbers and various dimensions, perhaps ever since the creation of the world, and as they are to be seen still in vast quantities upon Marlborough Downs near Abury, at a place called from thence the Grey Wethers, and are of the same kind, to wit, a bastard white marble.
The difficulty is, to conceive how stones of that immense weight, one of which, though neither the largest nor heaviest, has been computed by proper judges to weigh between 30 and 40 tons, and consequently would have required about 150 oxen to have drawn it, could be conveyed from their original seat to Stonchenge, which is 16 computed miles, and along such uneven grounds and in such quantities as compose the fabric. Sure it is, that no carriage can be conceived which would not have been sunk into the ground by such monstrous weight, unless it be that of rollers: but even this must appear a more than Herculean labour; the arduousness of which cannot be extenuated, but by the supposition that the whole, or at least the greatest part, of the nation contributed their help towards it in their turns.
The rearing of them afterwards in such form and situation was a work of no less difficulty; for though we may reasonably suppose that they were all pecked and chilled, had their mortises and tenons wrought, and every thing done that could lighten and fit them for the design, at the place where they were brought from; yet every man will easily perceive what an im-
mense labour it must have been to rear stones of that vast Stonechenge bulk and weight, to place them in their proper places, and at such due distances, that the architraves or imposts that locked them to each other at the top should fall so exactly every mortise upon its own tenon, as we find they actually do to this day: for it is plain to every eye that views them carefully, that each of these tenons are so exactly fitted to its mortise, that if either of the standing stones had been set ever so little out of its place, and perpendicular, they could never have locked one in the other till they were reduced to their due distance and position; especially considering that there were at least 15 in number of this large sort, set up two and two, the whole in a beautiful oval, nearest to a circle, and exactly locked each to the other by architraves of proportionable bigness. Each tenon is a druidish cubit, somewhat above 20 inches in diameter on the broadest side; for they are of an oval figure, and the mortises exactly answerable to it. By this contrivance the imposts or architraves lie firm locked upon the uprights, and these are kept firm to each other. Where the imposts are heaviest, the tenons are shortest; and where those are lightest, and consequently more in danger to be shaken, as in those of the outward circle, these are made longest, and the mortises deeper accordingly. If the bottom face of the impost be divided into three squares, the two mortises will be found in the middle of the two outward ones: draw diagonal lines from corner to corner, and where they intersect is the centre of the mortise; which central distance from one to the other is seven druidish cubits, or about eight of ours. Some other particulars show the whole to have been done geometrically, and from such plain and simple principles as would best answer every purpose of the grand design. And hence we may frame an idea of the curiousness as well as arduousness of the work, which must be owned to outvie all that we read of single obelisks, pillars, and statues, how gigantic soever, if we except the pyramids of Egypt and the Rhodian colossus.
The first account of this structure we meet with is in Geoffroy of Monmouth, who, in the reign of king Stephen, wrote the history of the Britons in Latin. He tells us, that it was erected by the counsel of Merlin the British inchanter, at the command of Aurelius Ambrosius the last British king, in memory of 460 Britons who were murdered by Hengist the Saxon. The next account is that of Polydore Virgil, who says that the Britons erected this as a sepulchral monument of Aurelius Ambrosius. Others suppose it to have been a sepulchral monument of Boadicea the famous British Queen. Inigo Jones is of opinion that it was a Roman temple; from a stone 16 feet long and 4 broad, placed in an exact position to the eastward, altar-fashion. However, the opinion of Dr Stukely is the most probable, who thinks that it was the chief temple of the Druids in Britain; of which a very strong proof is, that it can be measured only by the cubit used by the Druids.