Dateline Discovery

Most visitors will be held at arm’s length when visiting, but there’s one way to ensure being part of the inner circle.

The anticipation had already been building by the time the bus rumbled beyond the trees and back out among the rolling hills and open fields. One couple, with guidebook in hand, pointed out the window. One man reacted excitedly in Spanish, and an adolescent boy let out a yelp.

Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument in the English countryside, loomed up ahead; the sun, fighting through the clouds, hung low just over the horizon.

This is how it was meant to be seen.

We had come to this otherwise quiet corner of Wiltshere, a county two hours southwest of London, to marvel at the 4,000-year-old ruins of a Neolithic civilization. Mostly off-limits to the masses in recent years as part of conservation efforts — a rope barrier prevents any of the 10,000 daily summer visitors from getting closer than 30 feet — a handful of guests are allowed each day to mingle unfettered among the sarsens and bluestones, giving a rare glimpse into their might and scale.

I was among them. Arranging access is not difficult, but it does take some planning; availability is limited and demand is high, meaning it can be months before requests are processed. Once approved, though, the rest is fairly standard: After showing up at the visitors’ center at the designated time, it’s a five-minute ride out to the ruins, where the ropes are dropped and the privileged few are given just one rule — no touching.

It was shortly after dawn on a Sunday in July when we were granted access. Before permitting us onto the grounds, however, one of the guards, Kevin, asked that everyone hold at the entrance so that anyone interested could snap a couple of unspoiled photos. A short discussion and a few clicks later, we were in.

The sheer size of the stones was immediately evident. Those who built Stonehenge used two different types — bluestone, hauled from the Preseli Hills more than 150 miles away in Wales, and sarsen, a type of sandstone that was more locally sourced from the Marlborough Downs just 30 miles north.

The sarsens, many of which have been set upright and topped with a horizontal lintel of equal size, rise to more than 20 feet tall and are estimated to weigh 35 tons. Even the bluestones, the smaller jagged markers that form a ring within the ring, are believed to weigh more than two tons.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the bluestones would likely have been transported by boat around the coast of Wales, up the Bristol Channel and down the River Avon, where they would have been offloaded and dragged with the aid of wooden rollers, to their resting place. The sarsens, from relatively nearby, were likely brought up the hills a similar way; once shaped, levers would be used to pivot the stones into holes dug some eight feet into the earth, with supporting timbers required to hold them in place until the ground was filled in.

Even the stones that remain fallen are impressive, as they offer a glimpse of what the monument looked like in its not-so-distant past. The first recorded collapse of a trilithon was in January 1797, and though the government considered it a site of national importance in 1883, theoretically granting it additional protection, it remained neglected until another fell in 1900. Restoration began on a large scale in 1919, and in 1958, the stones that had fallen more than 150 years ago were returned upright.

Twenty years later, in an attempt to better manage preservation efforts, access within the circle was restricted for the first time. Until then, visitors were able to freely approach the stones, leading to the graffiti — including letters and simple pictographs — that was etched into some of the sarsens.

Other damage is visible up close. The stones have weathered over time, with some parts worn smooth or chipped ragged. Some of them have been pockmarked with small boreholes. A number of smaller stones, littered around the bases of the trilithons, are covered in moss. One stone even has a large groove carved into its side, suggesting it was originally used for another purpose.

After studying the stones for about 30 minutes, the sun finally broke through the clouds, giving us a glimpse of Stonehenge’s magic. During the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, the sun rises in the northeast, behind the Heel Stone just outside of the circle, and shines directly through one of the trilithons. (The reverse is true during the winter solstice, with the sun setting in the southwest, and recent archaeological evidence shows that this may have been a greater celebration among the Neolithic builders.)

Without an expert on hand to answer specific questions — visitors during normal access hours benefit from an audio guide — much of our understanding of the site came from Mark, an enthusiastic American man in his 50s who arrived an hour before the tour, and Kevin, who had worked on site for the past eight months. Kevin enthusiastically shared some of his own photos in between his spontaneous monologues, including one of a majestic sunrise and another of the monument under a blanket of snow.

As our time drew to a close, I ventured out to the Heel Stone, a jagged boulder placed upright some 300 feet from the rest of the ruins. This is the view that visitors would take in during normal access hours; a paved pathway loops behind the stone, and a sign nearby shows where a busy public road was once routed before it was closed and removed in 2013.

Once our hour ended, we returned to the bus for the journey back to the visitors’ center. There, exhibits show how the stones were likely to have been transported through the Wiltshere hills and how people would have lived in Durrington, the local village, at the time.

But to see exactly what they did, though, one must go inside the circle — a step far into the past.

Want to go? I visited Stonehenge in July 2018 after arranging a Stone Circle Access visit through English Heritage, renting a car through Avis and staying at Rollestone Manor in nearby Shrewton.

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