A piece of rock from Stonehenge that was taken during a repair project has been returned 60 years after it left the ancient site.
The Briton, Robert Phillips, who took the 1 metre-long cylinder of stone had been part of the team which repaired one of the trilithons, a three-piece standing stone, in 1958 after it had fallen down.
This process involved drilling ring-shaped holes into the three stones to insert metal rods which would reinforce the stones. The byproducts were three cylinders of stone.
Phillips removed one of these cylinders from the site and took it with him when he emigrated to America.
According to the BBC, he kept the stone in a plastic tube in his office and then on the wall in his homes as he moved to the states of New York, Illinois, California and Florida.
However, on the evening of his 90th birthday he decided to return the stone to England. His sons returned the stone to English Heritage, which looks after the site, in May last year.
‘Our father has always been interested in archaeology and he recognised the huge importance of the piece of the monument in his care. It was his wish that it be returned to Stonehenge. We are all delighted the core has come home, particularly as it is now being used to further important research,’ said one of Phillips’ sons, Lewis.
English heritage made the announcement of the stone’s return only once they had established its significance to understanding the origins of the site.
The organisation and a team of researchers from the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust project hope that the sample will help them to understand where the stones come from.
There are lumps of Stonehenge rock in museums around Britain, however they cannot be traced to specific blocks at Stonehenge. Stonehenge is located in Wiltshire in England, however some of the stone has already been traced back to a quarry in Wales about 200km away.
‘We are very grateful to the Phillips family for bringing this intriguing piece of Stonehenge back home. Studying the Stonehenge core’s ‘DNA’ could tell us more about where those sarsen stones originated,’ said Heather Sebire, the curator of English Heritage.
The researchers have been analysing the chemical composition of small shards of rock from the site, however this returned stone gives them the chance to study unweathered rock which they can link to a specific block with certainty.
Nowadays, it would be an offence to remove rock such as Phillips did. However, the lead researcher, Professor David Nash, states that the cylinders would have been thrown out in the 1950s – nowadays, they are kept.
There are still two other cylinders from the site at large, and English Heritage has appealed to anyone who has them to return them so that they too can be analysed.
Stonehenge is both a Wonder of the World and a World Heritage Site. It is a prehistoric stone circle monument built over six stages. The origin and meaning of the structure is still debated today. More than a million people visit it each year and over 30,000 visit it over the Summer Solstice.
Read here about why our columnist, Darrel Bristow-Bovey, should have stopped to see Stonehenge when he had the chance.
Feature image: Noah Jurik
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