Sir,—It appears to me that the question of the transport of the “blue stones” cannot be separated from that of the age of the monument. Having lived near to it for over forty years, having read nearly all its worthy and obtainable literature, and having been closely associated with all the exploration of its site up to the present, I am convinced that its erection must be assigned to the neolithic age, though, possibly, to more than one period within that long age. Not a scrap of convincing evidence has been adduced (Mr. Hadrian Allcroft’s arguments in the “Nineteenth Century,” April, 1920, for “The Modernity of Stonehenge” could be refuted by a schoolboy) nor a single object found to prove a later date. The one small stain of bronze discovered in 1901 could easily have been made by a burrowing animal pressing against a stone, a coin filtered down from above and decayed.
In neolithic times, in an island almost certainly centuries behind the Continent in civilisation, the means of transport must have been rude and elementary in the extreme, and I have not at all Mr. Crawford’s assurance that the transporters had ships capable of carrying a heavy cargo through long stretches of open sea. There is evidence that more advanced nations brought goods hither, but none known to me that goods were carried in British ships to the Continent. Even the Irish gold may have come to Britain via the Continent.
I am in entire agreement with Mr. Moor that the navigability of the Wiltshire Avon in prehistoric times is more than doubtful, but I would extend this to the Somersetshire Avon also. Both rivers were probably bankless swamps meandering through woodland and choked with rank vegetation and fallen trees. The transport of the stones by land, though even more arduous than Mr. Moor maintains, seems far less improbable, given unlimited labour and time.
The singularity in material and provenance of the “Altar Stone” is difficult of explanation. But we need
not, with Mr. Moor, invest it with exceptional sanctity. There is no doubt that it is simply a fallen upright, possibly
one which, with others long since removed, covered or fenced in a central burial.—Yours faithfully,
George Engleheart, F.S.A.,
Secretary for Wilts of the Society of Antiquaries.
Little Clarendon, Dinton, Salisbury,
August 1, 1923.
Source info: Cuttings agency; checked in library.