Hidden Britain AtlasOpen the map
All places › Circles & monuments
Ancient monument

Stonehenge

Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire

Britain's most famous monument still keeps its central secret: why it was built.

Stonehenge went up in stages over about 1,500 years. Its great sarsen stones are lined up with the midsummer sunrise and the midwinter sunset, so whoever planned it was watching the sky with real care.

Read the full story, see it on the map, get directions and find what else is nearby in the free Hidden Britain Atlas map.

Open Stonehenge on the mapReport a sighting here
When
c. 3000–1500 BC
Where
51.1789, -1.8262
Group
Circles & monuments

Visiting

English Heritage site. Book ahead; solstice dawn is the time to go.

Cover of The Ledger of Lost Britain by Cale Mills
From the book

The Ledger of Lost Britain

Stonehenge stands on Salisbury Plain, about two miles west of Amesbury. It was not built in one go, and the story begins long before the stones.

The Romans arrived in AD 43. For most people that is where the history of Britain begins. But by the time the legions landed, people had already been living on these islands for thousands of years. They had hunted, farmed, mined flint, dragged stones across the country, raised a hill by hand, and buried their dead in great tombs. They left no written words. What they left was the ground itself. Every place in this book can be visited, or has been dug up, or is in a museum.

Buy on AmazonAll books by Cale Mills

Nearby mysteries