Most of Stonehenge’s sandstone boulders were transported from just 15 miles to the north

Most of Stonehenge’s hulking sandstone boulders were transported from Wiltshire’s West Woods — just 15 miles north of Salisbury Plain, a study has revealed.

Experts led from the University of Brighton uncovered the the origin of the ‘sarsen’ stones thanks in part to a sample of the monument recently returned from the US. 

The core sample — which was drilled out of one of the stones during repair work on the Neolithic site in the 1950s — was compared to similar rocks across England.

Chemical analysis indicated that the 20-tonne, 30-feet high megaliths were sourced locally — likely to ensure the biggest stones could be used to build the henge.

The findings suggest the sarsens were brought over at roughly the same time — contradicting the idea that one, the ‘Heel Stone’, came first and from the plain itself.

Based on their results, the team have now proposed two possible routes that the sarsen stones could have taken from West Woods to Salisbury Plain.

Previous research — see below — has concluded that the monument’s smaller so-called ‘bluestones’ come from the north of Wales’ Preseli Hills and was transported across the land to Salisbury Plain.

However, the exact location of where the ancient people who constructed Stonehenge quarried the larger sarsen stones from was unknown.

It has long been assumed that the sandstone blocks came from Marlborough Downs, — but the theory had never been put to a rigorous test, the researchers explained.

In their study, however, the team used a non-destructive X-ray technique to analyse assess the make-up of all the remaining upright and lintel sarsen stones — finding that 50 of those 52 remaining megaliths share a consistent chemistry.

This, the team explained, indicates that they were sourced from a single area.

Next, the researchers took samples from the 1950s core — one of three taken at the time, and the only complete one remaining — in order to compare its composition with samples taken from sarsen boulders in 20 areas across England.

These included stones situated as far apart as Devon and Norfolk — and six that were found in the Marlborough Downs to the immediate north of Stonehenge.

The team’s analyses revealed that stone 58,from which the core was taken — and, by extension, therefore the majority of the other sarsens as well — most likely came from West Woods, around 15 miles north of the henge on the edge of the downs.

Further archaeological investigations and detailed sampling of sarsens from West Woods and the surrounding areas, however, will be needed to more accurately pinpoint the stone’s origin point and identify the prehistoric quarries involved.

According to English Heritage senior properties historian and paper author Susan Greaney, tracking down where the builders of Stonehenge sourced the sarsens in around 2,500 BC was a ‘real thrill’.

‘Now we can start to understand the route they might have travelled and add another piece to the puzzle,’ she added.

‘While we had our suspicions that Stonehenge’s sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, we didn’t know for sure — and with areas of sarsens across Wiltshire, the stones could have come from anywhere.’

‘We can now say, when sourcing the sarsens, the over-riding objective was size.’

‘They wanted the biggest, most substantial stones they could find and it made sense to get them from as nearby as possible.’

The core sample analysed by the researchers, along with two others, was removed from Stonehenge in 1958 by the firm Van Moppes (Diamond Tools) Ltd of Basingstoke in order to allow metal ties to be run through stone 58 to reinforce it.

The upright stone had been discovered to contain a number of fractures when workers set about restoring it — along with upright stone 57 and the pair’s lintel, stone 158 — to its original position. All three had toppled over in 1797. 

Van Moppes employee Robert Phillips retained one of the three cores — first giving it pride of place on display in his office, but later taking it with him to the United States when he emigrated there, at which point it became largely forgotten to history.

On the eve of his 90th birthday, however, Mr Philips asked his sons to return the core sample to England, and it was donated to English Heritage — who oversee the Stonehenge site — back in 2018.

As to the other two cores, part of one is now known to reside in the collections of at the Salisbury Museum — where it was rediscovered in 2019 — but its remainder, and the third core in its entirety, remain lost. 

‘Until recently we did not know it was possible to provenance a stone like sarsen,’ said paper author David Nash of the University of Brighton.

‘It has been really exciting to harness 21st century science to understand the Neolithic past and finally answer a question that archaeologists have been debating for centuries,’ he added. 

The returned core sample was key to allowing his team to finally determine the exact source area for the sarsen stones, he explained.

‘We’re incredibly grateful to the Phillips family for returning the core to us,’ he added.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.