Stonehenge, a Temple Restor'd to the British Druids

In 1740, one of England's first antiquarians set out to measure and understand a stone circle that had baffled visitors for millennia. William Stukeley spent summers walking among the sarsens and bluestones of Wiltshire, compass and ruler in hand, determined to decipher what ancient hands had raised on Salisbury Plain. He proposed a radical theory: the massive stone circle we see today was not original, but a rebuild. The Druids, he argued, first raised a wooden temple on this site, and only later reconstructed it in stone. Stukeley's meticulous drawings and measurements captured Stonehenge as both a scientific puzzle and a sacred relic, embedding the monument forever in British historical imagination. This is the book that launched a thousand theories about druids, ancient priests, and the religious origins of the British Isles.