Altar Stone

Oath Stone
SU1214942257

Nearest town:

Amesbury (3km E)

OS reference:

SU1214942257

OS sheet:

184

Latitude:

51° 10' 43.88 N

Longitude:

1° 49' 34.26 W

Added to TMA by

Chance

Images (2)
Videos (1)
Fieldnotes (1)
Miscellaneous (2)
Links (1)
Topics (1)

Images

Image of Altar Stone (Oath Stone) by Chance

The Altar Stone (80) is the largest of all the ‘foreign stones’ at Stonehenge. It is a rectangular recumbent block of sandstone, 16 ft. long by 3.5 ft. wide by 1.75 ft. deep, embedded in the earth so that its top is level with the surface, about 15 ft. within the central sarsen trilithon.

Two fallen members of this trilithon now lie across it (stones 55 and 156), and their weight has probably pressed it down to its present position. Like the adjoining bluestones, it has been carefully dressed to shape, but its exposed surface is now considerably abraded by the feet of visitors.

Image credit: Chance - March 2008

Chance Feb 21, 2011

Three types of stone are shown in this view.

The local sarsen from the Marlborogh Downs, 20 miles to the north, a blue stone from the Prescelly Mountains of Pembrokeshire and the Altar Stone, which is a fine-grained pale green sandstone.
This, interestingly enough, is not in the Prescelly Mountains of Pembrokeshire, the source of the rest of the blue stones, but in the Cosheston Beds (a division of the Old Red Sandstone of South Wales) which crop out on the shores of Milford Haven, further south in the same county.

No other stone composed of this rock is known at Stonehenge, though occasional fragments of it, very probably detached from the Altar Stone itself, have been found in the soil of the site.

Significantly, chips of an entirely different grey-green micaceous sandstone have also been collected on the site, and have been identified with a particular outcrop of the Cosheston Beds at Mill Bay on the south shore of Milford Haven, about 2.5 miles above the ferry at Pembroke Dock.

Image credit: Chance - March 2008

Chance Feb 21, 2011

Articles

Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2010

Video showing the Altar stone being used as the site of a pagan Handfasting or hand-festa.

For more on this see themodernantiquarian.com/post/69318/folklore/ringstone-or-handfasting-stone

Chance Feb 21, 2011

Altar Stone

Oath Stone

Chance Feb 21, 2011

The Alter stone lies just above the ground surface in the middle of Stonehenge.

Two fallen members of this trilithon now lie across it (stones 55 and 156), and their weight has probably pressed it down to its present position. Like the adjoining bluestones, it has been carefully dressed to shape, but its exposed surface is now considerably abraded by the feet of visitors.

Altar Stone

Oath Stone

Rhiannon Jan 21, 2025

This should count as folklore really, as I’m not sure how ‘some antiquary’ knew about Druidical traditions, but there we are. Plus I’m not sure how the sun could have reflected off it with 300 people crowding around. Sometimes I think it might be fun to go to Stonehenge on the solstice and then I remember it’s always full of Other People :)

In The Presence Of The Sun.
Congregations at Stonehenge have of late no longer been rare. Last week some Wiltshire antiquary called public attention to the Druidical tradition respecting the altar stone, and its peculiar reflection of the sun at daybreak on the longest day. In consequence of this some 300 people proceeded to Salisbury Plain to witness the spectacle. At 3.44 a.m. the sun rose beautifully, and its resplendence upon the altar stone, sacred to ancient fire-worship, was grand in the extreme. Since this success, numbers of visitors have assembled at the Circle daily before daybreak. – Mayfair

Quoted in the Northern British Daily Mail, 12th July 1878.

Altar Stone

Oath Stone

Chance Feb 21, 2011

The naming of the Altar Stone is due, apparently, to Inigo Jones, who made the first ‘plan’ of Stonehenge in 1620, although the real purpose of the stone is entirely unknown.

The Altar Stone, which is a fine-grained pale green sandstone, is not from the Prescelly Mountains of Pembrokeshire, the source of the of the blue stones, but from the Cosheston Beds (a division of the Old Red Sandstone of South Wales) which crop out on the shores of Milford Haven, further south in the same county.

No other stone composed of this rock is known at Stonehenge, though occasional fragments of it, very probably detached from the Altar Stone itself, have been found in the soil of the site.

Significantly, chips of an entirely different grey-green micaceous sandstone have also been collected on the site, and have been identified with a particular outcrop of the Cosheston Beds at Mill Bay on the south shore of Milford Haven, about 2.5 miles above the ferry at Pembroke Dock.

Altar Stone

Oath Stone

stolinskie Jan 25, 2025

Stonehenge and its Altar Stone: the significance of distant stone sources

Abstract
Geological research reveals that Stonehenge’s stones come from sources beyond Salisbury Plain, as recently demonstrated by the Altar Stone’s origins in northern Scotland more than 700 km away. Even Stonehenge’s huge sarsen stones come from 24 km to the north, while the bluestones can be sourced to the region of the Preseli Hills some 225 km away in west Wales. The six-tonne Altar Stone is of Old Red Sandstone from the Orcadian Basin, an area that extends from the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland to Inverness and eastwards to Banff, Turriff and Rhynie. Its geochemical composition does not match that of rocks in the Northern Isles, so it can be identified as coming from the Scottish mainland. Its position at Stonehenge as a recumbent stone within the southwest arc of the monument, at the foot of the two tallest uprights of the Great Trilithon, recalls the plans of recumbent stone circles of north-east Scotland. Unusually strong similarities in house floor layouts between Late Neolithic houses in Orkney and the Durrington Walls settlement near Stonehenge also provide evidence of close connections between Salisbury Plain and northern Scotland. Such connections may be best explained through Stonehenge’s construction as a monument of island-wide unification, embodied in part through the distant and diverse origins of its stones.