Rows around the Heel Stone

Stone and timber settings, linear arrangements, and the limits of the archaeological record north-east of Stonehenge

Introduction

The north-eastern approach to Stonehenge is the most frequently viewed and least systematically excavated part of the monument. The solstitial axis, the proximal Avenue, and the Heel Stone all occupy a narrow wedge of chalk that also contains a dense concentration of recorded features: approximately a dozen stone positions, more than sixty post-holes, at least one sarsen working floor, dwelling pits, and four earthworks. Despite this density, the ground has never been examined as a research excavation. Every intervention since Hawley’s 1923 cuttings has been salvage work conducted ahead of infrastructure.

This paper sets out the recorded features, presents measurements from published plans that identify a previously unremarked linear arrangement of stone-holes, and examines one feature from the 2014–15 road-removal works whose published interpretation remains under-determined.

 

Hawley’s plan with 97 and 10067 added

 

History of investigation

The A344 constrained all work from the 1760s until 2013. Hawley (1923) cut across the Avenue but stopped approximately 3 m short of the Heel Stone. Subsequent interventions (Atkinson et al. 1953–56; Vatcher 1968; Pitts 1979–80) were linear trenches cut for services. The combined 1979–80 exposure amounted to a ribbon roughly 50 m long and 0.5–0.65 m wide. The 2014–15 mitigation following road removal remained a watching brief with targeted slots rather than an area excavation (Powell et al. 2019).

Recorded features

Stone positions include the standing Heel Stone (96), the recumbent Slaughter Stone (95), and emptied settings: Stonehole 97, Stonehole B (WA 3606), Stonehole C (WA 3609), Stoneholes D–F at the entrance, WA 3603 (Hawley’s chip-dump crater), WA 3610 and 3611, and an unlabelled feature near WA 3721.

Timber settings fall into two distinct groups. Across the causeway Hawley recorded some fifty-three post-holes arranged in six roughly parallel rows; these are comparatively slight features that he interpreted as the remains of a palisade. In addition, three substantially larger post-holes were found immediately adjacent to the Heel Stone. These measured 43, 35 and 32 inches deep (approximately 1.09 m, 0.89 m and 0.81 m), were spaced roughly six feet apart in a straight line and showed traces of a fourth. The Avenue bank had been thrown over them, and at least one appears to lie within the zone later occupied by the Heel Stone ditch. They are visible on Plate X of the 1925 report. Despite their size, comparable in depth to several of the stone settings in the same area, these larger post-holes have received almost no subsequent attention.

Earthworks consist of the Avenue ditches and banks, the enclosure-ditch terminals, and the Heel Stone ditch (approximately 1.2 m deep, with an antler pick sealed beneath silt).

Hawley’s 1923 cutting

Hawley cut across the Avenue beside the Heel Stone in a strip perhaps thirty feet wide. Within it he recorded a dump of 3,760 sarsen chips overlying a bed of sarsen sand, accompanied by five small hammerstones but no large mauls (WA 3617/3618). Some fragments retained the natural crust of a boulder; others were reddened by burning. His diary notes that the debris lay beneath the Avenue bank, placing the working before the construction of the earthwork.

Partly beneath the chip dump lay a crater-shaped hole 5 ft across and 4 ft 6 in deep (WA 3603), with one or two smaller holes beside it that Hawley interpreted as footings for a timber frame used to move a stone (WA 3604, 3605). Half-way across the cutting was a second, rougher hole with irregular sides, 3 ft 9 in to 4 ft 6 in across and of similar depth (WA 3606, Stonehole B), surrounded by hard grey sarsen but without a chip dump. From it a trench approximately 9 ft wide with sloping sides (WA 3607) ran towards the Heel Stone, backfilled with chips of every stone type present on the site. Further west lay a third large hole (WA 3609, Stonehole C).

The same cutting produced the line of large post-holes described above and, around the Heel Stone itself, a ditch 4 ft deep and 3½ ft wide. An antler pick lay on the bottom beneath eighteen inches of silt that contained no stone chips; chips appeared only in the higher fills.

  

Hawley Plate X

Geometry from published plans

Distances and bearings measured from the Heel Stone on Cleal et al. (1995, fig. 156), with an estimated uncertainty of ±0.3 m, are as follows:

Feature	Distance (m)	Bearing (°)
Stonehole 97	3.8	336
WA 3605	6.4	198
WA 3604	6.8	192
WA 3603	7.6	185
WA 3606 (Stonehole B)	8.3	253
WA 3611	9.0	194
WA 3610	9.5	191
WA 3609 (Stonehole C)	16.2	237

 

Stoneholes 97, B and C form an approximately straight, evenly spaced line (spacings 8.7 m and 8.5 m; segment bearings 227° and 222°). Looking north-east along the same line yields bearings of approximately 42–47°. This places the row in the general sector of the horizon occupied by both the Neolithic summer solstice sunrise (approximately 49.5–50°) and the major northern lunar standstill moonrise (approximately 40°), but several degrees from either extreme. It is therefore not a close match for the principal solstitial axis of the monument or for the major lunar limit.

Stonehole 97 lies 0.8 m off the line through B and C, within measurement error given its truncated outline. The Heel Stone itself projects 4.2 m south-east of this line. WA 3603, 3610 and 3611 form a separate cluster offset from the axis.

A second, shorter alignment of Stoneholes D, E and the Slaughter Stone socket lies near the entrance, oriented roughly perpendicular to the axial row, with the Slaughter Stone socket falling on the extended 97–B–C line within error.

Implications

The long-standing debate has treated Stonehole 97 as an isolated feature—either the original socket of the Heel Stone or the setting of a paired companion. The measured geometry indicates that 97 is the north-eastern member of a row of three emptied settings. The simplest reading is therefore that it held one of those three stones, not the Heel Stone.

The moved-stone hypothesis (Hawley 1928; later variants placing the Heel Stone originally in 97) requires the stone to have been extracted from a member of the row and re-set 4 m beside it. It also conflicts with Hawley’s own 1925 assessment that WA 3606 was too small for the Heel Stone—an objection he did not reconcile when he later proposed that the stone had come from that hole.

The alternative reading, that the Heel Stone is a survivor of an earlier group of unshaped sarsens (Hawley 1925; Pitts 1982), is strengthened by the presence of an axial row, a transverse group at the entrance, and additional emptied pits, one of them sealed by a dressing floor and the Avenue bank.

Portable XRF data indicate that the Heel Stone shares its chemistry with the majority of the other sarsens and is consistent with a West Woods source (Nash et al.). Its undressed state is therefore a deliberate choice rather than evidence of local origin.

The 2014–15 works and feature 10067

Powell et al. (2019) confirmed that the Avenue ditches survive to depths comparable with sections outside the former road line and that periglacial features are present both within and beyond it. Road construction does not appear to have caused wholesale truncation of deeper features.

A shallow hollow 0.06 m deep (context 10067), located within the Avenue immediately north of the Heel Stone ditch, was interpreted as the base of a tree-throw. No section, fill description or morphological argument is published. The feature lies on the previously inaccessible northern side of the stone. Approximate measurement from the published plan places it roughly on the projected line of the 97–B–C row, but the data are too imprecise for secure geometric conclusions.

Absolute levels recorded in 2014–15 sit more than a metre above the traditional Heel Stone benchmark values used by Pitts (100.70 m OD, Newlyn datum) and, apparently, by earlier excavators. Hawley’s Fourth Report cites the upper benchmark (B.M. 332.5 ft = 101.346 m, Liverpool datum). The discrepancy remains unresolved in the published literature and prevents direct comparison of absolute heights across campaigns.

Whether 10067 represents a truncated artificial socket or a natural hollow cannot be determined from the published record. The critical missing datum is the depth of the road cut at that specific point, which exists in the project archive.

Conclusions

Measurement of published plans identifies an evenly spaced axial row of three emptied stone-holes (97, B and C), with the Heel Stone standing 4 m off the line. Stonehole 97 is therefore better understood as one end of that row rather than as the unique former position or partner of the Heel Stone.

Feature 10067 remains under-determined. Both the geometric arrangement and the status of 10067 can be tested by reference to existing archives. The principal constraint is not the absence of evidence but the limited extent to which the evidence already recovered has been examined.

References

Cleal, R.M.J., Walker, K.E. and Montague, R. 1995. Stonehenge in its Landscape: Twentieth-century Excavations. English Heritage.

Hawley, W. 1925. Report on the excavations at Stonehenge during the season of 1923. Antiquaries Journal 5, 21–50.

Hawley, W. 1928. Report on the excavations at Stonehenge during 1925 and 1926. Antiquaries Journal 8, 149–176.

Nash, D.J., Ciborowski, T.J.R., Ullyott, J.S., Pearson, M.P., Darvill, T., Greaney, S., Maniatis, G. and Whitaker, K.A. 2020. Origins of the sarsen megaliths at Stonehenge. Science Advances 6, eabc0133.

Parker Pearson, M., Pollard, J., Richards, C., Thomas, J., Tilley, C. and Welham, K. 2012. Stonehenge remodelled. Antiquity 86, 1021–1040.

Pitts, M.W., Howard, H., Bartlett, A. and David, A. 1982. On the road to Stonehenge: report on investigations beside the A344 in 1968, 1979 and 1980. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 48, 75–132.

Powell, A.B., Barclay, A.J., Mepham, L. and Stevens, C.J. 2019. Along the road to Stonehenge: investigations of the Stonehenge Avenue and within the World Heritage Site. Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 112, 197–216.