Aligned with the Cosmos

On the morning of the summer solstice, the sun rises just beside the Heel Stone and its first light reaches into the heart of the monument, roughly along its central axis. Seen from the centre of the circle, the sun actually clears the horizon a little to the left of the stone rather than squarely over it — and a now-missing partner stone may once have stood alongside the Heel Stone to frame the sunrise between them.

A Place of Feasting

Two miles from Stonehenge sits Durrington Walls, a huge settlement first excavated in the 1960s and re-investigated in the 2000s, when archaeologists uncovered a Neolithic village beside it. Thousands of people gathered there for winter solstice feasts, roasting pigs that had been driven in from as far away as Scotland.

The picture this paints is not of a remote ruin but of a busy gathering place. People came from across Britain to build, celebrate, and bury their dead — making Stonehenge the center of a living landscape, not a lonely monument.