An attempt to present the complete record of known excavation around the Altar Stone of Stonehenge.
In the 1620s, the Duke of Buckingham led one of the earliest excavations at Stonehenge, spurred by a visit from King James I. The excavation took place at the center of the site, where a large pit was dug. During their search for treasure, they uncovered skulls of cattle and other animals, as well as burned coals and charcoals.
WANHS. V.16 No.46-48 (1876). Devizes :WANHS, 1876, is the source for the antiquarian excavation records. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/45246.
Page 33: "In Plate VIII fig 2, π is a Pitt which the Duke of Buckingham ordered to be digged, when King James the first was at Wilton : at which time, and by w"' meanes, the stone twenty one foote long (now out of the earth) reclined by being under -digged. (x in fig. 2 and z in the Prospect, plate the Vlth.]"
I have overlaid a plan of Stonehenge onto Fig 2 and it indicates the pit that was dug was not adjacent to the Altar Stone. Though strangely it claims that that the lean of Stone 56 is due to the pit being dug.
Page 48 - 49 John Wood gives a further description:
At the upper end of the Adytum is the altar, a large slab of blue coarse marble, 20 inches thick, 16 feet long, and 4 broad pressed down by the weight of the vast stones that have fallen upon it. ' George duke of Buckingham in the reign of James I. caused the middle of Stonehenge to be dug, where remains a cavity as big as two saw-pits. This occasioned the falling down or inclination of a stone 21 feet long. There were found heads and horns of stags and oxen^ charcoal, arrowheads, rusty armour and rotten bones, but whether of men or beasts uncertain ......
Dr. Stukeley, 1723, dug on the inside of the altar to a bed of solid chalk mixed with flints. In the reign of Henry VIII. was found here a plate of tin, inscribed with many letters, but in so strange a character that neither Sir Thomas Elliot, a learned antiquary, nor Mr. Lilly, Master of St. Paul's School, could make them out. This plate to the great loss of the learned world was soon after lost.
Stukeley on Page 84: " July 5, 1723. By Lord Pembroke's direction, I dug on the inside of the altar about the middle : 4 foot along the edge of the stone, 6 foot forward toward the middle of the adytum. At a foot deep, we came to the solid chalk mix'd with flints, which had never been stir'd. The altar was exactly a cubit thick, 20 inches and 4/5; broken in two or three pieces by the ponderous mass of the impost and one upright stone of that trilithon which stood at the upper end of the adytum, being fallen upon it.
Hence appears the commodiousness of the foundation for this huge work. They dug holes in the solid chalk, which would of itself keep up the stones, as firm as if a wall was built round them. And no doubt they ramm'd up the interstices with flints. But I had too much regard to the work to dig anywhere near the stones. I took up an oxe's tooth, above ground, without the adytum on the right hand of the lowermost trilithon, northward. And this is all the account of what has been found by digging at Stonehenge, which I can give." '
On Page 85 John Wood gives further commentary: Dr. Stukeley says that he dug close to the altar, and at the depth of one foot came to the solid chalk. Mr. Cunnington also dug about the same place to the depth of nearly six feet, and found the chalk had been moved to that depth ; and at about the depth of three feet he found some Roman pottery, and at the depth of six feet, some pieces of sarsen stones, three fragments of coarse half-baked pottery, and some charred wood. After what Stukeley has said of finding the marl solid at the depth of one foot, the above discoveries would naturally lead us to suppose, that some persons, since his time had dug into the same spot ; yet after getting down about two feet, there was less and less vegetable mould, till we reached the solid chalk ; some small pieces of bone, a little charred wood, and some fragments of coarse pottery were intermixed with the soil.
Page 86: The following extract is from a letter by Mr. Cunnington, F.S.A.. of Heytesbury, dated November 1802, with which his grandson, Mr Cunnington, F.G.S., has kindly favoured the writer : " I have during the summer dug in several places in the area and neighbourhood of Stonehenge and particularly at the front of the altar, where I dug to the depth of 5 feet or more, and found charred wood, animal bones and pottery. Of the latter there were several pieces similar to the rude urns found in the barrows, also some pieces of Roman pottery.
In several places I found stags' horns. The altar-stone is 16 feet 2 inches long, 3 feet 2 inches wide, and 1 foot 9 inches thick. It was completely broken in two by the fall of the impost of the great trilithon. It was neatly chiseled as you may see by digging the earth from the side.
Richard Beamish (1798-1873) excavated in 1844 according to the label on his sample in Salisbury Museum;
Page 86- 87 gives the description of his excavation:
Mr. Joseph Browne gave to Dr. Thurnam the following account of a digging in front of what is called the altar-stone by Captain Beamish, who undertook the exploration in order to satisfy a society in Sweden that there was no interment in the centre of Stonehenge : Some years ago, I do not remember the year, but it was that in which Mr. Autrobus came of age [? 1839], and that there were rejoicings at Amesbury, an officer from Devonport, named Captain Beamish, who was staying at the George Hotel, having obtained the permission of the proprietor, made an excavation somewhere about eight feet square and six feet deep, in front of the altar- stones digging backward some little distance under it. I remember distinctly the hole being dug through the chalk rubble and rock.
Nothing was found excepting some bits of charcoal, and a considerable quantity of the bones of rabbits. Before the hole was filled up, I buried a bottle, containing a record of the excavation."
The next and last excavation was by Richard Atkinson:
The Altar Stone
During the work of restoration in 1958 a small excavation was made round the Altar Stone in order to settle its exact shape, and thus to decide, if possible, whether it had ever formerly stood upright on one end.
The north-western end of the stone was found to have been heavily battered and defaced by former souvenir-hunters; but enough remained to suggest that in its original form it had been squared off at right-angles to the length of the stone.
The other end, however, was better preserved, and had clearly been dressed to an oblique bevelled outline, very much like the bases of some of the sarsens (e.g. stones 57 an d 58).
The purpose of these obliquely pointed bases seems to have been to facilitate the final adjustment of the stone after it had been raised to vertical position. The occurrence of the same form, deliberately worked, at one end of the Altar Stone suggests that it too was a pillar, and one which, in view of its exceptional size among the bluestones, probably stood on the axial line. We were not able to dig beneath the stone, because it now supports the weight of two fallen sarsens (55b and 156) and is itself broken into two pieces. But it is at least possible that the Altar Stone has fallen over its own stone-hole, just as have several of the sarsens (e.g. 55, 57, 58).
Underneath stone 55b, immediately behind the Altar Stone and just to the south-east of the axis, we found a large hole which seemed to have been a stone-hole. It was hardly deep enough to have held the Altar Stone itself; and its position suggests that it is one of a pair, set symmetrically on either side of the axis. It was unfortunately not possible to verify this by further digging. Tentatively, however, we may conclude that a pair of stones stood here within the oval setting of dressed bluestones (phase IIb). This pair of adjacent stones would thus serve, as it were, as a back sight for the observation of the midsummer sunrise, the single stone in the hole K at the other end of the oval acting as the fore sight
(Atkinson Stonehenge 1979 revised version Appendix I p211-212)
Thanks to Simon Banton for the research for this post.
