The Age of Stonehenge.

BY THE

REV. EDWARD DUKE,
M.A., F.G.S., &c.

THIRD EDITION.

SALISBURY: BROWN & CO.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO.

PRICE THREEPENCE.

PREFACE.

The first thought which is almost sure to present itself to the mind of a visitor to Stonehenge is this—can we reasonably fix its age?

The author of the accompanying little pamphlet has endeavoured to answer this question as far as, in his judgment, it admits of being answered.

Lake House, near Salisbury.

The Age of Stonehenge.

Will the precise age of the erection of Stonehenge ever be ascertained?  It seems very unlikely that it ever will be.  Perhaps it is not desirable that it should be.  The mystery which enwraps it in this respect adds not a little to the imposing grandeur of those weather-beaten stones.  But though we cannot say exactly how old this wonderful structure is, we may, I think, say with confidence that it is not later than a certain era, i.e., that when the Roman legions invaded our shores (B.C. 55) Stonehenge was standing as now in the midst of Salisbury Plain.  To the proof of this I am wishful to draw attention, inasmuch as the post-Roman theory put forth by the late Mr. James Fergusson has obtained credence with not a few intelligent persons.

Mr. Fergusson’s well-known work, “Rude Stone Monuments,” contains much interesting information on the subjects of which he treats, and the facts which he adduces we may presume to be facts collected with care.  But this proves nothing as to the truth of the inferences which he deduces from his premises.  The observing faculty and the faculty for drawing correct conclusions do not always meet in the same individual, as was notably the case in the late talented Charles Darwin with respect to his physical evolution theory.  Fergusson confidently maintains, in the work to which I refer, that “Stonehenge was erected as a monument to the memory of the British chiefs treacherously slain by Hengist.”  He supposes that its building commenced about A.D. 466, and may have been completed about A.D. 470.  And on what authority does he chiefly rely historically for this theory?  On the mediæval historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote about A.D. 1140.  But what does he himself say of the credibility of this writer?  To quote his own words: “he was a fabulist of the most exuberant imagination” (p. 106), and again he says of him (p. 88), “he is a frail reed to rely upon”; and yet, strange to say, we find him building much on the uncorroborated statement of Geoffrey that Stonehenge was erected in memory of the slaughter of certain British chiefs.

But no less weak and inconclusive is his reasoning when he brings his reader within the area of Stonehenge.  He points attention to the fact that Sir R. C. Hoare had stated in his “Ancient Wilts,” I. p. 150:—“We have found in digging (within the circle) several fragments of Roman as well as coarse British pottery, part of the head and horns of deer and other animals, and a large barbed arrow-head of iron”; and he also mentions that Mr. Cunnington at an earlier date had discovered