Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/119

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Chap. III.
AVEBURY AND STONEHENGE.
93

stones, and it may be well to adopt that short title for the present, as involving no theory, and as sufficing to distinguish them from the local Sarsens.

Rude Stone Monuments 0119.png

24.
Plan of Stonehenge restored.

None of the blue stones are large; one of the finest (23 in Sir R. Colt Hoare's plan) is 7 feet 6 inches high, 2 feet 3 inches wide at base, tapering to 1 foot on top. The others are generally smaller. One blue stone opposite 23 is grooved with a channel from top to bottom, though for what purpose it is not easy to guess. On the most cursory glance, it is evident that these stones generally stood in pairs, about 3 feet apart; but some are so completely overthrown and displaced, that it is not quite clear whether this can be predicated of all. Entering the choir on the left hand we find one that seems to stand alone. But we may infer that this was not always so, from the circumstance that there lies close by it an impost stone with two mortice holes in it, only 3 feet 6 inches apart, which must have belonged to a smaller order of trilithons,