Next spring Peterh, If You want, I will come with You around the sites , and We could check just where the openings align to ?
In Norman churchs the wooden pews are not what they appear, they are sited with great precision , at precise centres, this is due to the dielectric qualities of wood, the pew backs are on line with something, and the opening in between is also in line with something, people.
This concept is hard to come to terms with, but I assure You that churchs are built as capacitors, to ,release and store a charge, as were stone circles, and a wooden corral around would have added to the effect, it would also have been functional for protection against preditors etc.
I also have a hunch that they roofed over the whole thing, and decorated the site, churchs are a mere improvement on earlier knowledge.
K.

Of course, no consistent position of the entrance gaps doesn't signify there was no religious or ritual significance, merely that there was no archaeo-astronomical significance. In fact, further, they might have been dripping with archaeo-astronomical significance, but this happened to be not expressed through the position of the openings...

I can't help feeling that the people who expended the considerable effort of making a henge merely to keep animals in rather than for religious purposes would have been of a very peculiar mindset compared with how most people tend to be through history, and that some sort of communal belief system was most likely to have been involved.

Peter, can I suggest a little research? The following books may help you reach a totally different conclusion regarding the use of henge monuments.

The Stone Circles of ..... etc - Aubrey Burl
Henge Monuments of the British Isles - Jan Harding
The Significance of Monuments - Richard Bradley
Seahenge - Francis Pryor
...........................and just about anyone else in the late 20th century who has excavated and written about henges.

Must admit that I also feel that there is too much emphasis on the religious/ritual nature of henge and other monument sites and not enough on the practical side.
It seems that when people gather together they must also bring other expectations to the meeting, and if they have to travel a great distance other matters would also come to the fore. Trade, in the form of the different objects that come from a wide source, marriage, or its equivalent, did the girl bring some more practical gifts such as animals to her new life. Food came on the hoof, was it ritually slaughtered in the henge itself?
Bradley says that ritual is also part of everyday life, and that what people are expressing at these meetings is a narrative of their lives - their past ancestors are represented, their pottery, animal and human bones are ritually deposited at the entrances to henges or in pits.
And to quote from another source (Mendip report -P.Ellis) "It is more likely that the physical form of the monument reflects a conscious use of symbols. The double circle of closely spaced timbers and intervening hurdles may be a deliberate representation of an animal stockade"
He is talking about the southern circle at Priddy circle/henges, three circles in a straight line, plus another one at an angle - another monument to be speculated upon....
So perhaps henges are mult-functioned in modern terminology, but in prehistoric terms all these happenings were a perfectly natural way of life, interwoven with physical realities and spiritual meaning.

Great question!

Henges today follow a rough pattern of an area of land enclosed by an inner ditch and a bank on the outside.

We haven't a clue what went on inside them. Just as many buildings today don't just have ONE purpose, why shouldn't henges - which come in all shapes and sizes - have many, many different purposes? To believe they all had the same use - and only one use - is not a great place to start from.

To neolithic communities an area of land enclosed by an inner ditch and a bank on the outside would have been bloody useful. I reckon they were gathering grounds probably used a couple of times of year for something we might describe today as a 'festival'. Like a festival it would have also been a marketplace, offer speed-dating services, livestock trading, stalls trading fancy goods, and campground.

In many parts of Africa, where the population is dispersed, people gather once or twice a year at specially designated places to do all these things. For example, the Cure Salee gathering in Niger, where the semi nomadic people of the Tuareg and Wodaabe come together to do all these things. They bring livestock to trade, get married, meet up with family and friends from all over the Sahara, do a bit of dancing, listen to music, tell stories, meet holy men and shamen, chat up potential spouses... They trade in salt, leathers, rope, spices, metals, clothing, precious things and generally have a great time. The Cure Salee doesn't take place in a henge, but it has a particular fixed location. What better place to do this than a secure and specially constructed meeting place like a henge? Bring your oxen, goats and sheep, tether them securely them against danger in henge, camp outside the henge and party on down inside! You could call this activity 'ritual' or 'ceremonial' if you want. (I don't really know what either of those words mean anymore!) or you could just call it people gathering to party.

Perhaps at other times of the year when the festival wasn't on, young animals would be grazed within the safety of the henge. Why not? Nice piece of secure land, good grazing, easy to shepherd.

It's probably a stupid point. But there weren't any rabbits in Britain in the Neolithic? So if you were going to do anything in a henge in the summer without wading through kneehigh grasses, you might want to have special mowing animals in for at least a while to tidy the area up a bit.

But somehow I can't see that when henges are renowned for their paucity of artifacts, as though they were deliberately kept pure and clean, that you'd want a load of animals pooing everywhere. You wouldn't want animals pooing in Canterbury Cathedral, would you, god's creations or not.

I'm trying to find out about the persistence of nitrates in the soil. But not getting very far yet. They'd be easy enough to test for but unless you've got an unusual soil they'd surely all be leached out by now? But do I have a vague memory of them discussing this on the Durrington Walls tt programme?

I'm a bit unclear as to the workings of henge corrals. How deep, how high and how vertical would the walls need to be. How soon would they erode, is there evidence they were re-cut, would they be used in conjunction with a fence (in which case, why not just use a fence?)
Would the animals be allowed into the ditch? Presumably, else if there was a fence to keep them out of it, what's the point of the ditch or the bank?

Whatever the truthes - at least we are no longer talking exclusively about wretched leylines! Ho! Ho! Ho!

Another non-ritual practical use? Not my comment but see http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGallery&file=index&do=showpic&pid=18218

Not wishing to prolong this and not wanting to go over old ground, but I would appreciate your views on this. Is it a stone circle or a ring cairn or a fanciful reconstruction or...a corral?

This photo is perhaps one of the clearest on file...http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGallery&file=index&do=showpic&pid=18321