The Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site, in Wiltshire, is of outstanding universal value for its outstanding prehistoric monuments.
'Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites' became a World Heritage Site in 1986 for three key reasons:
- Its monuments demonstrate outstanding creative and technological achievements in prehistoric times
- The World Heritage Site provides an outstanding illustration of the evolution of monument construction, and of the continual use and shaping of the landscape over more than 2000 years, from the early Neolithic to the Bronze Age. The monuments and landscape have had an unwavering influence on architects, artists, historians and archaeologists, and still retain a huge potential for future research.
- The complexes of monuments at Stonehenge and Avebury provide an exceptional insight into the funerary and ceremonial practices in Britain in the Neolithic and Bronze Age.
Together with their settings and associated sites, they form landscapes without parallel. Stonehenge and its landscape represent an incomparable testimony to prehistoric times.
The significance of the World Heritage Site and its outstanding universal value are further detailed in the Management Plan.
To protect such a wealth of archaeological features, the Stonehenge World Heritage Site covers more than 2,600 hectares (6,500 acres) of chalk downland and mixed arable fields, extending from Larkhill to Lake in the Woodford Valley and from Amesbury to Longbarrow Crossroads.
Did you know?
- The Stonehenge World Heritage Site contains 415 scheduled monuments.
