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There are at least 120 known 'henges' in the British Isles, with examples to be found from the south west of England to the Scottish islands and from the Thames valley to the river Boyne. The biggest and most famous concentration is in the Wessex chalklands, where monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury attract millions of visitors each year. There are many other less well-known henges, including Woodhenge and Durrington Walls in the same area. The largest such complex outside Wessex is at Thomborough, in north Yorkshire, where there are six large henges within 10 kilometres of each other.
In archaeological terms, a henge is usually defined as a circular or oval area enclosed by a bank and an internal ditch. This distinguishes them from defensive enclosures, where the ditch would be on the outside (and the bank probably topped by a wooden palisade). The distinction is not a hard and fast one, however: Stonehenge does not have an internal ditch and some henge monuments have ditches both inside and outside the bank.
Even without a defensive purpose, the banks and ditches around henges were often built on a massive scale. The ditch at Avebury, for example, is nine metres deep and 21 metres wide in places, while that at Durrington Walls is six metres deep and 16 metres wide, with a three-metre-high bank. These would have been spectacular structures when they were built – the cathedrals of their age especially so in chalkland areas, where the exposed white chalk of their perimeters would have been visible for miles around.
Henges vary in size from just a few metres across to almost 500 metres in diameter at the biggest sites, such as Durrington Walls and Avebury. Even the smallest represent a significant commitment of time and effort by the Neolithic and Bronze-Age communities that built them in the third millennium BC. The largest would have involved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in their construction – not only to carry out the actual building work but also to supply the materials, tools, food and other necessities to those engaged in it. Without the advantages of modern technology, and working only with stone tools, antler picks and the like, the henge builders must have been extremely well organised and committed to take on such large and long-term projects.
This level of commitment emphasises the importance that must have been placed on henge monuments in antiquity. So what were they used for? Debates rage among archaeologists and others, but the truth is that no one can be entirely sure.
It is generally accepted that henges had some kind of ceremonial, religious or ritual significance, but it is less clear how this related to the specific features found on henge monument sites. A large proportion of them have been found to contain some sort of circular arrangement of timber posts, identifiable today by their postholes. Others, of course, contain stone circles, though these should not be confused with the henge itself (see Stonehenge: the henge that isn't. Other features include standing stones or cairns, pits, burials, stone or timber entrance posts and evidence of various other structures.
The banks and ditches of henge monuments are usually broken by one or more entrances. (Archaeologists classify henges according to the number. Class I henges have a single entrance, Class II henges have two, and Class III henges have four. There are also sub groups for henges that have more than one internal ditch.) It is often thought that these align with midsummer or midwinter sunrises, but in fact most of them show no such alignment. This does not mean that the henges were not associated with midsummer or, more likely, midwinter festivals or gatherings – indeed, many monuments have a clear link, particularly to the midwinter sunrise – but there is little evidence for a straightforward, common astonomical alignment.