Stonehenge

National Heritage List for England Data

Stonehenge is listed on the National Heritage List for England with the following data. Some information may have become outdated since the date of listing. Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The monument, which falls into three areas, includes Stonehenge, the Avenue, and three bowl barrows forming part of a linear round barrow cemetery which is bisected by the Avenue 1500m east of Stonehenge on Countess Farm. Stonehenge is located towards the western edge of a natural amphitheatre some 2km in diameter. This area is bounded in the west by the high plateau forming Stonehenge Down, on the north by an east-west ridge on which is located the western sector of the Cursus and its associated round barrow cemetery, on the east by a north-south ridge on which are sited the barrow cemeteries of New King Barrows and Old King Barrows and the Coneybury henge monument, and on the south by an east-west ridge on which is located the Normanton Down round barrow cemetery.

Stonehenge has a series of features, contained within a circular earthwork enclosure, which have been added to the monument or modified in layout over a period of about twelve hundred years (c.2450 BC to c.1250 BC) The outermost and earliest element is a circular bank c.6m wide and a maximum of 0.6m high, surrounded by a ditch c.7m wide and a maximum of 2m deep. There are slight traces of an outer bank c.2m wide surrounding the ditch on the northern and eastern sides, giving an overall diameter of 115m. The ditch possesses two original entrance gaps or causeways, one at the south of the enclosure 4.5m wide and the other in the north east sector 10m wide forming the entrance from the Avenue. There are corresponding gaps in the bank at these points...

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