stonehenge

[wollock]

Where have the missing stones from stonehenge gone. If it was that much of a mission to get them there in the first place then who removed them and where to?

[Octavius]

I read somewhere that a lot of them were taken down and broken up to make stones for building walls and houses. This was back in the time when the people thought that the stone circle represented paganism and devil worship so it was in their interests to destroy it. The circle was also momentarily destroyed by the Romans as they were persecuting the druids and wouldn't allow them to worship.

[Octavius]

From the English Heritage website:

A lot of the original stones have been taken by our ancestors to build their houses and roads. Also, a lot of stones have been chipped away by visitors and taken away as souvenirs over the past couple of hundred years.

[brachiopod]

Of course, druidic students were known to wake up with a monolith at the end of their beds after a night out on the mead - along with the obligatory chariot-traffic cone.

[Octavius]

Gosh, 24 hour henge-drinking.

[Hippy]

I think in those days they were Wode Cones!

[henneth]

It wasn't just the Puritans who took away stones from Stonehenge. The area is predominantly chalk so there isn't much stone available. Areas of limestone are quite some distance away. Therefore if a farmer wanted to build a new barn he would topple down one of the standing stones and break it up as building material. That's how a large amount of damage was done at the circles of Stanton Drew and Avebury as well.

[bubblebubble]

The Druids got them on hire purchase and couldn't keep up the repayments on all of them, so a lot of them got reposessed and sold on ebay to the BBC.