Is Stonehenge a henge?

"Did you know Stonehenge isn't actually a henge?" By the archaeological definition, that's correct. The more interesting question is where the word came from. This page is the companion to the short film Is Stonehenge a henge?

The definition

T. D. Kendrick coined "henge" in 1932 as a class name, taken from Stonehenge. As an archaeological type, a henge is a round earthwork "in which a ditch was dug to make a bank, which was thrown up on the outside edge of the ditch" (Pitts 2001, 26–28): ditch inside, bank outside. Stonehenge's own neighbours fit it. Durrington Walls is "surrounded by a ditch up to 17.6m wide and an outer bank", and Woodhenge has an outer bank "up to 10m wide" (Historic England, List entry 1009133).

Stonehenge reverses it. "The ditch of the enclosure is flanked on the inside by a high bank and on the outside by a low bank, or counterscarp" (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The monument that gave the class its name fails the class's test.

A henge: ditch inside, bank outside. Diagram, not to scale. 

Click pictures to embiggen

Stonehenge: main bank inside the ditch, low bank outside. Diagram, not to scale.

The name

The earliest record is Henry of Huntingdon's, c. 1130, listing the wonders of England: "Secundum est apud Stanenges; ubi lapides mirae magnitudinis in modum portarum elevati sunt, ita ut portae portis superpositae videantur". In translation: "The second is at Stanenges, where stones of wonderful size are raised like doorways, so that doorways seem set on doorways."

The usual reading splits the name into Old English stān, "stone", and hengen, "something hung": a gallows, or stones hung in the air. Stukeley (1740, ch. II) took both views: "Stonehenge is a stone gallows, called so from the hanging parts, architraves, or rather imposts", and "pendulous rocks are now called henges in Yorkshire… Stonehenge in Saxon signifies the hanging stones."

John Hines (2025) takes hengen in its dominant Old English sense. The Dictionary of Old English records one instance meaning "hanging"; the rest refer to "the cross or rack used for torture", and the word glosses ergastulum, a house of correction. He reads the name as "stone prison".

A hanger?

A third candidate is the downland word for a wood on a slope. Old English hangra is "a wood on a hill-side" (Bosworth–Toller), and it survives as hanger. Gilbert White's Selborne had "a long hanging wood called the Hanger. The covert of this eminence is altogether beech" (White 1789, Letter I). The same word gives Hanger Hill and Hanger Lane in Ealing. Related words across the North Sea mean "slope": Middle Low German hanc and Middle Dutch hangende.

The obvious objection is spelling. The early forms (Stanenges, Stanheng, Stanhenge) have no r. But Old English also had henge-clif, "a steep, precipitous cliff; præruptum" (Ælfric's Glossary; Bosworth–Toller), a henge- word for steep ground with no r at all.

Stonehenge sits on the brow of a gentle slope, with the hanger wood of Luxenborough plantation beside it. Read as a "stone hanger", the name describes where it stands, as the hanger woods of the Downs are named for where they grow (Daw 2016). That remains a suggestion. Hengen, in one sense or another, is the usual reading.

Stonehenge with the hanger wood behind.

Caveats

• "Henge" as a class is a 20th-century convention; the builders did not share it.
• The film's section diagrams are schematic and not to scale.
• The cognates come from Wiktionary's etymology for hangra and still need checking against a printed etymological dictionary.
• Music: original.

Sources

• Bosworth, J. & Toller, T. N. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: hangra; henge-clif.
• Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (c. 1130). Latin as quoted in S. Ferguson, "On a passage in the Historia Anglorum of Henry of Huntingdon relative to Stonehenge", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 9.
• Hines, J. 2025. Anglo-Saxon Stonehenge. Early Medieval England and its Neighbours 51. Cambridge Core
• Historic England, List entry 1009133: Henge monuments at Durrington Walls and Woodhenge.
• Kendrick, T. D. & Hawkes, C. F. C. 1932. Archaeology in England and Wales 1914–1931. London: Methuen.
• Pitts, M. 2001. Hengeworld. London: Arrow.
• Stukeley, W. 1740. Stonehenge, a Temple Restor'd to the British Druids. London.
• White, G. 1789. The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne. London.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Stonehenge".

Earlier post: Stonehenge – What does "Henge" mean, why is it a "Henge"? (9 December 2016)