Landmark Europe
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a ring of giant stones in England. People built it about 4,500 years ago, long before cars or even wheels. Some big stones have other stones laid on top.
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in England. It began as a round earthwork about 5,000 years ago, and its stone circle went up about 2500 BC. Hundreds of people moved huge stones, some from Wales, and lined them up with the sun.
Built in stages from about 3000 BC, with its sarsen and bluestone settings raised about 2500 BC, Stonehenge is described by UNESCO as the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world. It is aligned on the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.
Photo: Stefan Kühn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Discover Stonehenge
Stonehenge is in England, on a wide, grassy plain.
It is a big circle of giant stones. Some stones stand up tall. Some have a stone lying across the top, like a doorway. Some have fallen over. It is very, very old.
Stonehenge stands on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, in southern England. It is a prehistoric monument, which means it was built before people there wrote anything down.
It was not built all at once. The first monument was a round ditch and bank built about 5,000 years ago, and the great stones were put up about 2500 BC, around the same time as the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Its stones are lined up with the sun. Together with Avebury, another stone circle in Wiltshire, it is a World Heritage Site, and in 2025 it had 1,253,397 visits.
Stonehenge lies on the chalk downland of Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, at the heart of what English Heritage calls one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe, with more than 350 burial mounds and monuments such as the Avenue, the Cursus, Woodhenge and Durrington Walls. UNESCO's "Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites" (1986) calls it the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world, and English Heritage the only surviving lintelled stone circle.
It was built, altered and revered for over 1,500 years, around 100 generations: an earthwork enclosure about 3000 BC, the stone settings about 2500 BC and rearrangements into the early Bronze Age. The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions recorded 1,253,397 visits in 2025.
- Where
- Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, UK
- Stone circle built
- about 2500 BC
- World Heritage Site
- Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites (1986)
- Visits (2025)
- 1,253,397
Built in stages
Long ago, people dug a big round ditch here.
Hundreds of years later, they brought giant stones and stood them up in a circle. Later still, they moved some stones around. People have visited ever since.
About 3000 BC, people dug a circular ditch with banks of chalk, about 100 meters across. Inside they set up a ring of 56 posts or stones, and for several hundred years people buried the ashes of their dead there.
About 2500 BC, they raised the great stones in the middle: big sarsen stones in an outer circle and an inner horseshoe, with smaller bluestones between them. Two or three hundred years later the bluestones were rearranged. In 1918 a local man, Cecil Chubb, gave Stonehenge to the nation, and English Heritage looks after it today.
English Heritage traces the site from Mesolithic posts (8500 to 7000 BC) and an early Neolithic complex around 3500 BC to the first henge of about 3000 BC: a ditch with inner and outer banks enclosing an area about 100 m across, with 56 Aubrey Holes. About 64 cremations have been found, and perhaps as many as 150 people were buried there, making it the largest late Neolithic cemetery in the British Isles.
About 2500 BC the sarsens were set in an outer circle and inner horseshoe, with bluestones between; 200 or 300 years later the bluestones were rearranged and the Avenue linked the monument to the river Avon. Y and Z holes dug around 1800 to 1500 BC may mark a rearrangement never completed. After a sarsen and its lintel fell in 1900, restoration campaigns ran until 1964. Cecil Chubb gave the monument to the nation in 1918.
Who built it, and how
Hundreds of people worked together to build Stonehenge.
They had no metal tools and no wheels. They pulled the stones with ropes. Other people cooked food and looked after the children.
Stonehenge was built by Neolithic farmers and herders, using only simple tools, before metal and before the wheel. English Heritage says it needed hundreds of people to move, shape and raise the stones, and others to feed them, look after their children and make ropes, hammerstones and antler picks.
The big sarsen stones came from West Woods, about 25 kilometers to the north, and weigh about 25 tons on average. The smaller bluestones, 2 to 5 tons each, came all the way from the Preseli Hills in Wales, more than 250 kilometers away. The builders probably lived at Durrington Walls, a large settlement nearby, where people gathered for great feasts.
English Heritage describes Stonehenge as a masterpiece of engineering built with simple tools before metals and the wheel, requiring hundreds of well-organized people and others to supply food, childcare and equipment such as hammerstones, ropes, antler picks and timber. The sarsens, a silcrete averaging 25 tons (the Heel Stone about 30), have been geochemically traced to West Woods on the Marlborough Downs; the bluestones, 2 to 5 tons, to the Preseli Hills of south-west Wales, over 250 km away.
Stones were dressed with sarsen and flint hammerstones in a field to the north. Each upright was tipped into a sloping pit lined with wooden stakes and hauled up with plant-fiber ropes, probably with an A-frame, then packed with rubble; lintels were probably raised on timber platforms. Mortise-and-tenon and tongue-and-groove joints, usually found in woodworking, lock lintels to uprights and to each other. The builders probably lived at Durrington Walls, where over 38,000 animal bones, 90 percent of them pig, record midwinter feasts; isotope analysis shows some pigs were raised as far away as north-east Scotland.
Sarsens, bluestones and the sun
Stonehenge has two kinds of stone: very big ones and smaller ones.
Some pairs of big stones have a stone across the top. On the longest day of summer, the sun rises next to a special stone. On the shortest day of winter, the sun once set between two tall stones.
There are two kinds of stone. The huge sarsens form an outer circle and an inner horseshoe of trilithons: two upright stones with a third laid across the top, called a lintel. The smaller bluestones stand between them.
The stones are lined up with the sun. Standing in the middle on midsummer's day, you would see the sun rise just to the left of the Heel Stone, outside the circle. On midwinter's day, the sun once set between the two uprights of the tallest trilithon, but one of them has fallen.
The sarsens form an outer circle and an inner horseshoe of trilithons, with bluestones in a circle and a horseshoe between them; four Station Stones mark the corners of a rectangle at the edge of the ditch, and the Avenue's final straight stretch follows the north-east to south-west solar axis. Laser survey shows the north-east side and the inner faces of the central trilithons were the most finely dressed, framing the solstice axis.
At midsummer the sun rises just left of the Heel Stone, possibly once framed by a partner stone; at midwinter it set between the uprights of the tallest trilithon, now half fallen. English Heritage notes that midwinter may have mattered more, since its sunset lies ahead of anyone walking up the Avenue. Four sarsens bear hundreds of carvings of bronze axe-heads and a few daggers, of about 1750 to 1500 BC.
- Sarsen stones
- about 25 tons on average
- Bluestones
- 2 to 5 tons each, from the Preseli Hills, Wales
- Heel Stone
- about 30 tons
- First henge
- about 100 m across, about 3000 BC
What was Stonehenge for?
Nobody knows for sure why Stonehenge was built.
The builders lined the stones up with the sun. People may have gathered there in summer and winter to mark the seasons and remember family members who had died.
Stonehenge has no known practical use. Digging shows that the area inside the circle was kept clean of everyday rubbish, and English Heritage imagines people coming here to celebrate midsummer and midwinter.
English Heritage says the most widely accepted explanation is that it was a prehistoric temple, a place of ceremony lined up with the movements of the sun. The people who built it were farmers and herders, for whom the seasons mattered a great deal. Midsummer and midwinter may have been times to remember the dead, and at midwinter people gathered nearby to feast together.
Stonehenge has attracted more theories than perhaps any other prehistoric monument. English Heritage reports that the most generally accepted interpretation sees it as a prehistoric temple aligned with the movements of the sun, the most striking of the ceremonial complexes then emerging across Britain and Ireland, places to honor the ancestors and mark key moments of the calendar.
English Heritage says there are few clues to what people did there. The evidence includes the solstice alignments built into the stones, the cleanliness of the interior, the cremation burials of its early phase, and the midwinter feasting at Durrington Walls. Whether the monument also tracked the moon is debated; archaeo-astronomers think it unlikely that the equinoxes, now celebrated there by modern visitors, meant anything to its builders.
Amazing facts
-
Stonehenge's stones are joined like wooden furniture.
The builders cut joints in the stones, like woodworkers do, so the lintels lock onto the uprights and onto each other.
Mortise-and-tenon joints fix lintels to uprights and tongue-and-groove joints link the lintels, techniques usually found only in woodworking.
-
People brought pigs from far away for big feasts.
People came to feasts near Stonehenge from far away. Some of the pigs they ate were raised as far away as north-east Scotland.
Isotope analysis of pig teeth from Durrington Walls points to animals raised in west Wales, upland northern England and even north-east Scotland.
-
A man bought Stonehenge and then gave it away.
In 1915 a local man, Cecil Chubb, bought Stonehenge at an auction. Three years later, in 1918, he gave it to the nation.
Stonehenge stayed in private hands until 1918, when Cecil Chubb, who had bought it at auction three years earlier, gave it to the nation.
-
Stonehenge was built at about the same time as the Great Pyramid.
The great stones went up about 4,500 years ago, around the same time as the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
English Heritage notes the finished sarsen monument dates to around the same time as the Great Pyramid, about 4,500 years ago.
Words to know
- prehistoric
- from the time before people wrote things down
- henge
- a round area surrounded by a ditch and a bank of earth
- lintel
- a stone or beam laid across the top of two uprights
- trilithon
- two upright stones with a third laid across the top
- solstice
- the longest or shortest day of the year
- Neolithic
- the New Stone Age, when people began farming but still used stone tools
Discovery challenge
-
Which country is Stonehenge in?
In which country is Stonehenge?
On which country's Salisbury Plain does Stonehenge stand?
- England
- Japan
- Brazil
Show the answer
England
England, in the United Kingdom!
Stonehenge is on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, in southern England.
England: it lies on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, in the United Kingdom.
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What is the stone lying across the top called?
What do we call a stone laid across the top of two upright stones?
What is the horizontal stone fixed by mortise-and-tenon joints to two uprights called?
- A lintel
- A wheel
- A chimney
Show the answer
A lintel
A lintel! It lies across the top like a shelf.
It is called a lintel. Two uprights and a lintel together make a trilithon.
A lintel; with its two uprights it forms a trilithon, locked by mortise-and-tenon joints.
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What did the builders line the stones up with?
What were the stones of Stonehenge lined up with?
With what is the main axis of Stonehenge aligned?
- The sun
- A river
- A road
Show the answer
The sun
The sun! On the longest and shortest days.
They lined up the stones with the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset.
The solstices: midsummer sunrise beside the Heel Stone and midwinter sunset through the tallest trilithon.
-
Where did the smaller bluestones come from?
Where did the bluestones come from?
From which region, over 250 km away, were the bluestones brought?
- The Preseli Hills in Wales
- The Moon
- Egypt
Show the answer
The Preseli Hills in Wales
From hills in Wales, very far away.
They came from the Preseli Hills in Wales, more than 250 kilometers away.
The Preseli Hills of south-west Wales; some may first have stood in a circle at Waun Mawn.
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How many people did it take to build Stonehenge?
About how many people were needed to move and raise the stones?
What workforce does English Heritage say the stone circle required?
- Just one person
- Hundreds of people
- Robots
Show the answer
Hundreds of people
Hundreds of people worked together.
Hundreds of people moved, shaped and raised the stones, and others fed them and made tools.
Hundreds of well-organized people, supported by others providing food, childcare and equipment.
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For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Locate Stonehenge and explain that it was built in stages by prehistoric people.
- Describe how hundreds of people moved and raised huge stones with simple tools.
- Explain how Stonehenge is lined up with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.
- Discuss how archaeologists learn about the past when there are no written records.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- How do you think people moved stones weighing 25 tons without wheels or metal tools?
- Why might farmers and herders have cared so much about the longest and shortest days?
- Archaeologists found pig bones from far away. What can bones and tools tell us about people who left no writing?
Try at home or in class
- Build a trilithon from two upright blocks and a 'lintel' (a ruler or strip of card), then test how far apart the uprights can go before the lintel sags.
- Mark where the sun rises or sets from a window on the same date each month and see how the place moves through the seasons.
Key vocabulary: prehistoric, henge, lintel, trilithon, solstice, Neolithic
Where these facts come from
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- UNESCO World Heritage List , UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Linked as a reference; site facts come from Wikidata)
- History of Stonehenge , English Heritage
- Building Stonehenge , English Heritage
- Significance of Stonehenge , English Heritage
- Understanding Stonehenge , English Heritage
- Food and feasting at Stonehenge , English Heritage
- Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites , UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Visits made in 2025 to visitor attractions in membership with ALVA , Association of Leading Visitor Attractions
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file (public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA); see each media record)
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 24, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.