A long construction
When it was built
The earliest structures known in the immediate area are four or five pits, three of which appear to have held large pine totem-pole-like posts erected in the Mesolithic period, between 8500 and 7000 BC.1
The first Stonehenge was built about 5,000 years ago, in the period of prehistory known as the Neolithic.2 The earliest known major event was the construction of a circular ditch with an inner and outer bank, built about 3000 BC.1 This enclosed an area about 100 metres in diameter, and had two entrances.1 English Heritage describes that first earthwork as an early form of henge monument.1
Set just inside the bank were 56 pits, known as the Aubrey Holes.1 The first monument at Stonehenge was a circular earthwork enclosure, built in about 3000 BC.3 Within the ditch was a ring of 56 timber or stone posts. The monument was used as a cremation cemetery for several hundred years.3
What stood in the Aubrey Holes?
English Heritage is careful here. The history page says the consensus for many years has been that the 56 Aubrey Holes held upright timber posts, but recently the idea has re-emerged that some of them may have held stones. The building and timeline pages say "56 timber or stone posts." This site reports that debate and does not pick one.
About 64 cremations have been found at Stonehenge.1 Perhaps as many as 150 individuals were originally buried at Stonehenge, making it the largest late Neolithic cemetery in the British Isles.1
The timeline says the bluestones from the Preseli Hills in Wales, over 150 miles (250 km) away, may have arrived around 3000 BC.2
When did the bluestones arrive?
The English Heritage timeline says the bluestones from the Preseli Hills in Wales, over 150 miles (250 km) away, may have arrived around 3000 BC, the time of the first earthwork. The history and building pages describe the central stone settings, including bluestones set in a double arc, as part of the transformation in about 2500 BC, with a later rearrangement. "May have arrived" is not the same as "were raised then." This site keeps the hedge and does not treat 3000 BC as a settled date for the raised bluestone settings.
In about 2500 BC the stones were set up in the centre of the monument.1 In about 2500 BC the site was transformed by the construction of the central stone settings.3 Two types of stone are used at Stonehenge: the larger sarsens and the smaller bluestones.1 The sarsens were erected in two concentric arrangements, an inner horseshoe and an outer circle, and the bluestones were set up between them in a double arc.1 Probably at the same time, the sarsens close to the entrance were raised, together with the four Station Stones on the periphery.1
By about 2500 BC, more and much larger stones had been brought there, marking the start of over 800 years of building and alteration stretching into the Bronze Age.2
About 200 or 300 years later the central bluestones were rearranged to form a circle and inner oval, which was again later altered to form a horseshoe.1 The earthwork Avenue was also built at this time, connecting Stonehenge with the river Avon.1
One of the last prehistoric activities at Stonehenge was the digging of two rings of concentric pits, the Y and Z holes, radiocarbon dated by antlers within them to between 1800 and 1500 BC.1
From about 2400 BC, well-furnished Beaker graves such as that of the Amesbury Archer are found nearby.1
Britannica says the monument called Stonehenge was built in six stages between 3000 and 1520 BCE.4
Into modern hands
The monument remained in private ownership until 1918, when Cecil Chubb, a local man who had purchased Stonehenge from the Antrobus family at an auction three years previously, gave it to the nation.1 In 1918 local landowner Cecil Chubb, who bought Stonehenge three years earlier from the Antrobus family, gives it to the nation.2 Thereafter, the duty to conserve the monument fell to the state, today a role performed on its behalf by English Heritage.1
From 1927, the National Trust began to acquire the land around Stonehenge to preserve it and restore it to grassland.1
In 2013 the road which ran close to the stones is closed. A new visitor centre is built 2 kilometres away from the monument.2
