The 1938 Stonehenge Vandalism Incident: Larkhill Officers and the Onset of War

On the night of 16 June 1938, four recently commissioned Second Lieutenants of the Royal Artillery, William Laurence Sherrard, William Howard Skinner, John Edward Passingham Peirce (often noted as Pierce), and John Lambert Shearme (erroneously noted as Shearne in some reports) engaged in an act of vandalism at Stonehenge. This episode, occurring amid the escalating tensions preceding the Second World War, exemplifies the occasional lapses in discipline among junior officers during a period of transition from peacetime routines to wartime preparedness. All four were in their early twenties, having completed training courses at Larkhill Garrison near Salisbury, and were due to depart for new postings the following day.

The Incident

Following a guest night at the Larkhill officers' mess, the group acquired green paint and brushes from the garrison's tennis courts. They applied paint to four upright sarsen stones in the main circle and portions of the Heel Stone also know as the Friar's Heel. Reports indicate the inscription of the phrase "Does this look like a friar?" on the stone. Additionally, several chamber pots were placed atop the affected monoliths.

They also altered a road sign on the London-Exeter trunk road (the A303). Contemporary accounts describe the addition of a letter to the destination "Exeter," though the precise modification—believed to render it as "Sexeter"—was omitted from published reports due to its indelicate nature.

The vandalism was discovered the following morning, prompting immediate concern from the site's custodians and local authorities.

Legal Proceedings and Response

The incident drew widespread press attention, with an estimated 60 officers from Larkhill initially requested to come forward. Sherrard, Skinner, Pierce, and Shearme voluntarily confessed, demonstrating a commitment to accountability consistent with the era's expectations of officers and gentlemen. They appeared before Salisbury Magistrates' Court, where they pleaded guilty to charges of criminal damage.

Each was fined £1, with the group collectively ordered to pay £20 in costs and restoration expenses. The presiding magistrate noted that the stones' natural patina might require up to 1,000 years of weathering to fully recover. Their commanding officer at Larkhill issued an official reprimand, but no further military sanctions were recorded. The leniency reflects the context of youthful indiscretion on the cusp of war, when such pranks were not uncommon among subalterns.

Wartime and Postwar Careers

All four were commissioned together as Second Lieutenants from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, with seniority dated 27 January 1938 (published in The London Gazette the following day, 28 January). They stood 25th, 38th, 41st and 45th in a single passing-out list of fifty-two Royal Artillery cadets — a cohort that also included, at sixteenth, Robin Horace Walford Dunn, winner of the Academy's Sword of Honour and later Lord Justice of Appeal Sir Robin Dunn, whose memoir Sword and Wig recounts the same Dunkirk-to-Normandy war these men were commissioned into. The Gazette also settles the spellings the 1938 press had mangled: the surnames are Shearme (not “Shearne”) and Peirce (not “Pierce”).

A small but satisfying detail emerges from that list: the cadets' personal numbers were issued in list order, as 74500 plus position — Shearme (25th) 74525, Peirce (38th) 74538, Sherrard (45th) 74545. On that pattern Skinner, 41st in the list, should be 74541, a prediction still to be confirmed against the Army List.

• William Laurence Sherrard. Commissioned 27 January 1938; by the time of the escapade that June he was posted to the School of Anti-Aircraft Defence, Biggin Hill. Educated at a Brighton prep school and then Wellington College — the same school as Robin Dunn — where he boxed and swam, he followed his father, a Royal Engineers major, into the army, and married Vivienne Burns-Cowden in 1941. Sent to Sumatra to help defend the Palembang oilfields, he was killed on 14 February 1942 at the Pladjoe oil refinery (not an airfield) during the Japanese paratroop assault, when the refineries' only regular defenders were the anti-aircraft gunners. His batman wrote to his mother that he died “taking on odds of fifty to one”. A Captain at his death, aged 24, he was Mentioned in Despatches and is buried in Jakarta War Cemetery (joint grave 3.B.1–2); he is also named on the Ditchling War Memorial in Sussex, where his parents lived, among the thirteen Second World War names added in 1946.

• William Howard Skinner (b. Bengal, 1918). Commissioned 27 January 1938; posted, like Sherrard, to the Biggin Hill anti-aircraft establishment by mid-1938. He appears to have survived the war — no casualty record carries his name — but no promotions, postings or honours have yet been traced; his service number (predicted as 74541) and later life await confirmation in the Army List. He is understood to have died at Lingfield, Surrey, in 2000.

• John Edward Passingham Peirce. Commissioned 27 January 1938; by June 1938 with the 22nd Anti-Aircraft Battery at the Royal Artillery Experimental Camp, Watchet. His personal number, 74538, matches his place in the commissioning list. He rose to Lieutenant-Colonel and was appointed MBE in the 1962 New Year Honours for services to the Royal Artillery, retiring thereafter to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers.

• John Lambert Shearme. Commissioned 27 January 1938; by June 1938 attached to the Coast Artillery School at Shoeburyness. His personal number, 74525, again matches his list position. He reached the rank of Major and was placed on retired pay on 29 September 1958, retaining a reserve liability; his coast-artillery specialism points to home anti-invasion duties.

Sources: commission, names, spellings and date — The London Gazette, issue 34477 (28 January 1938), p. 587; Sherrard's death, rank, award, grave and family — Commonwealth War Graves Commission casualty record (Capt. W. L. Sherrard, 74545); biography and the Ditchling commemoration — Ditchling History Project, “For the Fallen”; the incident — Mike Pitts, Digging Deeper (2016), and Time (August 1938). Ranks, retirements and the service numbers for Skinner, Peirce and Shearme derive from the Army List.