Stonehenge
If I had a chance to go to a very famous place, I would gladly choose to go to Stonehenge, one of the most mysterious and famous sites in the world. I have always wanted to visit Stonehenge ever since I read about it in my Horrible Histories book.
Stonehenge is located in the English county and at the centre of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds. An UNESCO World Heritage Site, Stonehenge was produced by a culture that left no written records. Many aspects of Stonehenge remain subject to debate. This multiplicity of theories, some of them very colourful, are often called the "mystery of Stonehenge".
The word “Stonehenge” is derived from the words Old English words stān meaning "stone", and either hencg meaning "hinge" (because the stone lintels hinge on the upright stones) or hen(c)en meaning "hang" or "gallows" or "instrument of torture". In other words, Stonehenge means stone gallows. I feel it adds to uneasy, macabre of the place.
What I admire most about Stonehenge is the mystery surrounding the place. Why was Stonehenge built? How was Stonehenge built? Who built Stonehenge? What built Stonehenge? These questions have baffled researchers and professors around the world for decades. This is mainly due to the little evidence for the construction techniques used by the Stonehenge builders.
I believe that Stonehenge was a domain of the dead, a place to celebrate past ancestors and the recently deceased. Many graves and burials were found in that area. Stonehenge was probably very famous in the past as well- people from far away were found in graves.
I would very much love to visit Stonehenge because like the Catacombs of Paris, the place has a very distinct aura of menace. And Stonehenge also boasts a very macabre past, which adds to the strange, guilty feeling I have in gullet when I go to places with horrible pasts. It is a joy visiting a place with such significance, knowing people who lived a thousand years ago probably reached the very climax of the lives in this circle of rocks.
This joy, added with the guilt and the knowledge of its troubled yet vague past, definitely makes this a place I truly would love to visit. I will probably have a chance to visit it on my next trip to the UK (missed it the last time I visited the UK) as Stonehenge is definitely worth the visit.
Azura Abdul Aziz
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