Raising the Foreign Stones
The five Sarsen Trilithons already mentioned were raised into position from the inside of the circle. Investigation has shown this to be a fact. It therefore stands to reason that the Foreign Stones were erected last, and not first as has so often been supposed.
This is a hard saying, for it at once negatives the picturesque legend that the Foreign Stones were a stone circle brought from Ireland, and erected by a colonial tribe, who afterwards gave dignity to their primitive temple by the erection of stately Trilithons. Furthermore, the débris of the ancient mason reveals chippings of Sarsen and Foreign Stone intermingled so thoroughly as to preclude any idea of two separate periods of building. Stonehenge, therefore, was erected at one date and continuously. It is a question, as yet, if the outer Sarsen Trilithons were erected from the outside or the inside of the circle.
It has not been possible, in the foregoing brief description, to enter into minute detail, but it is hoped that sufficient has been said to show the stages by which the work of building was approached.
First, the rough trimming of the Sarsen, as it lay upon the Down, then its transport to the spot, its final dressing, and the preparation of its foundation, followed by those anxious days during which the builders toiled as they raised it aloft; the feverish haste with which they rammed and packed the loose rubble about its foot, casting in their mauls and implements to wedge and fix it securely on its base: and last of all, the final effort of raising the impost on its wooden bed, rising now on this side, now on that, as the packings were inserted beneath the levered stone. What a contrast to the Stonehenge of to-day—abandoned and silent on the fast vanishing Plain of Salisbury. Yesterday, it was the workplace of a teeming hive of masons, the air filled with the tap of the smaller hammers dressing the stone faces, with the sullen thud of the big maul pounding the face of a newly arrived Sarsen, while the faint muffled "peck" of the deer's horn told of trench workers dressing down a chalk face to receive the thrust of the monolith, while high above the steady tap of the picks and hammers came the sounds of an unknown tongue raised now in command, now in argument, or encouragement as the work went on.
WHEN WAS STONEHENGE ERECTED?[ToC]
Until comparatively recent years, the date of Stonehenge was a subject for speculation, and so fascinating did it prove that it attracted the attention of a vast number of minor authorities, who in the face of no definite data on which to base their theses, set the date of Stonehenge at almost any period except that to which it has been proved to belong.