Those long-distance connections are being demonstrated through science, and that’s really helpful to understand that Stonehenge wasn’t an isolated culture, they were actually really interconnected,” Wilkin said. Marking the passage of time was important to many ancient cultures. For the people of Stonehenge who were farmers, growing crops and tending herds of animals, knowing when the seasons were changing was important. Winter might have been a time of fear as the days grew shorter and colder. People must have longed for the return of light and warmth. Marking this yearly cycle may have been one of the reasons that Neolithic people constructed Stonehenge – a monument aligned to the movements of the sun. First held in 1974 during the summer solstice, the Stonehenge Free Festival started as a counter-culture gathering that grew significantly in size over time. After tens of thousands of people showed up for the 1984 festival, authorities, concerned about such issues as open drug use, banned the event for the following year. Nevertheless, on June 1, 1985, a long convoy of vehicles filled with would-be festival goers (who were part of a movement called the New Age Travellers) made its way toward Stonehenge. We don’t know exactly how the stones were brought to Stonehenge, but some of them – the bluestones – came from the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales, over 150 miles (250km) away.

It was a real ‘let’s do it’ moment,” said Mr Rodger-Sharp. “Ironically, Glenn was visiting Stonehenge on the day I rang him so felt he had to accept — it was as though it was fate. While many believed Monmouth’s account to be the true story of Stonehenge’s creation for centuries, the monument’s construction predates Merlin—or, at least, the real-life figures who are said to have inspired him—by several thousand years. Other early hypotheses attributed its building to the Saxons, Danes, Romans, Greeks or Egyptians.Stonehenge is one of the most impressive prehistoric megalithic monuments in the world on account of the sheer size of its megaliths, the sophistication of its concentric plan and architectural design, the shaping of the stones - uniquely using both Wiltshire Sarsen sandstone and Pembroke Bluestone - and the precision with which it was built. The remains of a feast held close to Stonehenge around 3900 BC, offer a rare glimpse of exchanges between hunter-gatherers and the first farmer communities. Those gathered ate farmed beef and hunted venison. Chemical analysis shows that the two groups came from different places and their meat was prepared in different ways. The area of Stonehenge served as an important meeting place and a turning point for society. As a coming together of worldviews, languages, customs and traditions, the remains of this shared meal mark the end of thousands of years of a hunter-gatherer way of life.

According to the 12th-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose tale of King Arthur and mythical account of English history were considered factual well into the Middle Ages, Stonehenge is the handiwork of the wizard Merlin. In the mid-fifth century, the story goes, hundreds of British nobles were slaughtered by the Saxons and buried on Salisbury Plain. In the early Bronze Age, one of the greatest concentrations of round barrows in Britain was built in the area around Stonehenge. Many barrow groups appear to have been deliberately located on hilltops visible from Stonehenge itself, such as those on King Barrow Ridge and the particularly rich burials at the Normanton Down cemetery. Government guidance on protecting the Historic Environment and World Heritage is set out in National Planning Policy Framework and Circular 07/09. Policies to protect, promote, conserve and enhance World Heritage properties, their settings and buffer zones are also found in statutory planning documents. The protection of the property and its setting from inappropriate development could be further strengthened through the adoption of a specific Supplementary Planning Document.When English Heritage learned of his story, they allowed him to spend an hour among the stones by himself before the 10,000 or so revellers arrived. If the facts surrounding the architects and construction of Stonehenge remain shadowy at best, the purpose of the arresting monument is even more of a mystery. While historians agree that it was a place of great importance for over 1,000 years, we may never know what drew early Britons to Salisbury Plain and inspired them to continue developing it. Another compelling object is Germany’s Nebra sky disc – thought to be the world’s oldest depiction of the cosmos. It has only left the country four times. Like Stonehenge’s alignment with the sun, the bands on either side mark the positions of the rising and setting sun, while the inlaid gold stars may represent a constellation that can help calculate a leap year.