Gerard M. Foley
Travel & Photography Collection
Stonehenge up close
This marvelous temple complex is situated in England, about 80 miles southwest of London and about 8 miles north of Salisbury. My late wife and I visited Stonehenge in the 1960's, before it was substantially closed off to the public, as it is now. Do not let the fact that it is fenced keep you from visiting it. Here is what we saw on our first visit.
It was an overcast day, as is very common in the British Isles, but the weather improved gradually during the afternoon.
The great stones were erected around 1600 BCE, roughly contemporary with the New Kingdom of Egypt, the palaces of Knossos in Crete and Mycenae in Greece. They were the culmination of more than 500 years of construction at this site. A circle of great stones, called Sarsen stones, quarried some 40 miles away, was surmounted by a stone lintel. It enclosed a circle of smaller blue stones from 200 miles away in Wales, and a horse shoe shaped assembly of five huge trilithons.
These pictures were taken on Kodachrome with an East German Single lens reflex 35mm camera.
Stonehenge
Looking across the "heelstone"
Heelstone
Sarsen Stones at left
Blue stones in front of Sarsen Stones. Trilithon in right background.
Ruth Foley helping support the largest trilithon
Trilithon through gap in the Sarsen Circle
Trilithon
The Chalk Circle
Note peg on top of Sarsen Stone
Holes were made in the lintel stones to fit pegs on top of the standing stones
Images of daggers and axes are incised on the inner surfaces of some Sarsen stones.
A storm came up
As the sun went down the stones took on a pink glow
Beautiful but false