The story of Stonehenge

Stonehenge was built in stages over about fifteen hundred years, from about 3100 BC to about 1600 BC. First came the circular bank and ditch around it, dated to about 3100 BC. The great ring of sarsen stones was raised between 2600 and 2400 BC: each stone about 13 feet high, seven feet wide and weighing around 25 tons, topped by horizontal lintels fixed in place with mortise and tenon joints, like woodwork – a feature unique among monuments of its time.

Inside stand smaller bluestones, set in their current places between 2400 and 2200 BC, and huge trilithons, pairs of uprights joined by a single lintel. The whole monument is aligned with the sunrise at the summer solstice and the sunset at the winter solstice. Around it lies the densest group of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, with several hundred burial mounds.

Walk the path around the circle slowly, and picture the sun rising between the stones on midsummer morning.