Thursday 15 January 2015

Slaughter Stone



A sarsen stone, which originally stood upright but is now lying flat on the ground, near the north-east entrance to the stone circle.
The idea that this stone was used for slaughter appears to have been started by an anonymous writer, who referred to it in 1776 as a ‘table, upon which victims were dissected and prepared’. The idea and name seem to have resonated with 18th- and 19th-century romantic fantasies of the Druids. In reality, it is one of two or three upright stones that once stood across the causeway entrance to Stonehenge.