Stonehenge
No one knows who built Stonehenge. Work began around 3000 BC, and the large bluestones were brought from the Preseli Mountains in Wales – over 200 kilometres away. How they were transported remains a mystery to this day. Why, too.
Archaeologists have found cremation burials and animal bones from grand feasts, and the stones are precisely aligned with the solstices. A temple, then, or a calendar, or both. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote around 1135 that the wizard Merlin had erected the stones using magical powers. That sounds like a legend – but the sober version sounds hardly any more credible.
At night, when the orange glow of English streetlamps colours the sky and the stones emerge from the dark grass in the light of my torch, one understands why people here have not stopped telling stories for 5,000 years. King Arthur. Merlin. The Druids. They have all claimed Stonehenge as their own.
This photograph was taken whilst following the trail of myths and legends in southern England – and the trail of something older than all legends.

























