By Kate Turkington
London - Who dragged these huge stones for miles, and then managed to construct this immense stone circle using only the most primitive of tools?
Why this place? What did the imposing structure mean to the people who laboured so long and so hard to erect it? Was Stonehenge a place of worship, a healing centre, a place of sacrifice, an ancient calendar, or none of these?
As a pale sun slants through the great stones and a cold fierce wind gusts, I ask myself the same questions that visitors and locals alike have been asking for centuries.
Around me Wiltshire’s bleak Salisbury Plain stretches for miles. A few sheep huddle together as sleet begins to fall on the numerous – more than 350 of them – ancient burial mounds that dot the plain. A bus load of Chinese students struggle their way around the stones against the biting wind, only pausing to take each other’s photograph.
What we do know about the World Heritage Site of Stonehenge is that it was built about 5 000 years ago and was a place where the people of that time buried their cremated dead. It was only later that the huge blocks of stone known as sarsens, and the smaller bluestones, were erected in the middle.
These great stones have been baffling people for centuries. As long ago as the mid-12th century, a Lincolnshire archdeacon who was writing a history of the English commented that “no one can conceive how such great stones have been so raised aloft, or why they were built there”. However what we do know after 800 hundred years of research is that Stonehenge is precisely aligned with the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset.
We know more about the Maya pyramids, the ancient cities of Peru, and the building of the Great Temple in Jerusalem than we do about Stonehenge.
I fight my way against the wind as I circle the stones. The audio commentary is narrated in those deep plummy tones and dulcet voices so beloved of the English.
The voices tell me that Stonehenge is cloaked in myth and mystery, and talks about Merlin and King Arthur, druids and sun-worshippers. But hey, I knew that.
What is new and exciting is that a visitor centre is being built, adjacent roads are being closed, and the whole area around Stonehenge will return to grass. Three Neolithic houses based on original dwellings excavated at the site are also being built from authentic materials to give visitors an idea of how people might have lived 4 500 years ago.
Maybe we’ll never understand the motivation behind those incredibly creative and technological prehistoric achievements that produced Stonehenge, but not so with the next stop on my Wiltshire list – Salisbury Cathedral.
It’s impossible to see this great soaring edifice with the tallest spire in Britain, its sheer scale, without being overwhelmed by awe.
I marvel at the achievements of these medieval builders, craftsmen and architects who built this cathedral with no computer-aided design, no modern technology, but achieved the almost impossible with little more than faith and hope.
Building started in 1220, and only 38 years later in 1258 the cathedral was dedicated – the shortest building time of any great cathedral, even in modern times.
As I wander around the cloisters and into the great nave, I doubt if those medieval men of God could ever have imagined that the dean of Salisbury would one day be a woman. The present dean, The Very Rev June Osborne, was installed in 2004, the first woman dean of a medieval cathedral.
Morning worship, choral evensong, Mattins, the Eucharest, and Holy Communion continue daily as they have done for centuries in this living, working building of the Christian faith.
Salisbury Cathedral is also a repository of history. I can’t help myself – although I’ve seen it on previous visits – I have to have another look at the Magna Carta, one of the most celebrated documents in English history that became a blueprint of liberty that has influenced much of modern democracy.
Back inside the cathedral I walk past ancient tattered flags hanging high on the grey stone walls, and memorial stones to past heroes from long-forgotten wars. As I sit in an old carved wooden pew I listen to the choir practising and read the cathedral’s mission statement in the leaflet I picked up on the way in.
“Salisbury Cathedral exists to make real the glory and presence of God in the world.”
I can’t help wondering if that was also the motivation behind Stonehenge.
But we shall never know… - Sunday Independent