Random Historical Site Generator

How this random historical site generator works

Press Generate and you get a historical site and its country. Turn up the Number box for several at once, no repeats. Copy takes them.

The Great Pyramid. Machu Picchu. The Acropolis. The Colosseum. Petra. Pompeii. Persepolis. Chichen Itza.

And Stonehenge, where almost nothing you can see is standing where the last person to touch it left it.

Stonehenge was put back up with cranes

Between 1901 and 1964, the stone circle on Salisbury Plain was rebuilt. Not repaired. Rebuilt.

In 1901, William Gowland straightened sarsen stone 56, which was about to fall, and set it in concrete. In straightening it he moved it roughly half a metre from where it had been standing.

In 1919 and 1920, after Cecil Chubb, who had bought Stonehenge at auction in 1915, handed it to the nation, the Office of Works went further. Stones that had fallen in 1797 and 1900 were raised and fixed.

In 1958 and 1959, a full trilithon, two uprights and their lintel, which had collapsed in 1797, was hauled upright again. Three standing sarsens were re-erected and concreted in.

On 10 March 1963, a stone in the outer circle blew over in high winds. In 1964, the final phase, it was re-erected and the remaining stones were adjusted.

Christopher Chippindale, who wrote the standard history of the monument, has put it about as directly as a curator can: nearly every stone has been moved in some way, and they are standing where the twentieth century decided they should stand.

The moment the lintels stopped fitting

This is the detail that makes the whole thing worth telling, and it comes from English Heritage's own account of the 1919 work.

The restorers straightened stones 30 and 1, the central pair of the great north-east façade, and set them plumb in concrete.

And then the lintels no longer fitted the stones on either side. They had to be adjusted.

Think about what that means. The lintels were cut, four and a half thousand years ago, to sit on uprights that were not vertical. The people who built Stonehenge did not build it straight, and they shaped the stones on top to match the stones underneath.

Twentieth-century restorers, working from the assumption that the ancients must have meant it to be perpendicular, corrected the monument into something the builders never made.

The word the Office of Works was afraid of

They knew. That is the remarkable part.

After 1920 the Office of Works declined to restart the restoration programme, and the reason recorded is that if they carried on they would leave themselves open to accusations of faking the monument.

Then they restarted anyway, in 1958.

For decades the guidebooks said almost nothing about it. The official leaflet mentioned only that some fallen and leaning stones had been straightened and re-erected. Archaeologists knew. Visitors did not.

Nobody lied. The information was simply not in the place where people were looking.

So how much of an ancient site is ancient?

Once you have noticed it at Stonehenge you will notice it everywhere.

Every ruin you have ever visited has been stabilised. Walls have been capped so they stop shedding. Columns have been re-erected from fallen drums, a practice with its own name, anastylosis, and its own rule: use the original material, and make any new material visibly different.

None of that is fraud. Do nothing and the site turns into a heap. The question is not whether to intervene but how much to say about it, and the honest answer for most sites is: more than the sign at the gate does.

A ruin is not a thing that survived. It is a thing that was kept.

Where the stones came from

The stones themselves keep giving up new facts regardless of what the restorers did to their positions.

Stonehenge is built of two kinds of rock. The smaller bluestones come from the Preseli Hills in Wales, roughly two hundred kilometres away, and how they travelled that distance is still argued about.

The enormous sarsens were assumed for centuries to be local. In 2020, a chemical study matched fifty of the fifty-two surviving sarsens to West Woods, about 25 kilometres north, finally settling a question that had been open since the seventeenth century.

Which is the consolation. The positions of the stones are a twentieth-century decision. The stones are not. Their chemistry does not care what the Office of Works did with a crane, and it is still answering questions nobody thought to ask.

Ways people actually use this

• Travel shortlists. Most of these are not on the postcard rack.
• Quizzes. Show the site, ask for the century. Then ask how much of it was standing a hundred years ago.
• Teaching conservation ethics. Generate five and ask, for each, what you would do if it started to fall over.
• Writing. Persepolis, Pompeii and Petra all come with a ready-made ending.
• Looking things up. Search any of these alongside the word "restoration" and you will lose an afternoon.

Getting more out of the filters

• Entries read "Name, Country", so Contains doubles as a country filter. Try Italy, Greece, Peru, Egypt.
• Type Temple, Castle, Cathedral or Ruins to slice by what kind of thing survived.
• Type City for the ones where the site is an entire settlement, which are the ones with the most restoration behind them.
• Starts with and Ends with compare a single character. Give them one letter, not a word.

Questions people ask

Was Stonehenge rebuilt?

Substantially. Stones were straightened, re-erected and set in concrete in 1901, 1919 to 1920, 1958 to 1959, and 1964. Nearly every stone has been moved in some way. The stones are original. Their positions are not entirely.

Was this kept secret?

Not secret, but not published either. Guidebooks mentioned it in a single line for decades. English Heritage now describes the work openly in its own accounts of the monument.

Why did the lintels stop fitting?

Because the restorers made two uprights vertical, and the lintels had originally been cut to sit on uprights that were not. The builders of Stonehenge did not set their stones perfectly upright, and they shaped the tops to match.

What is anastylosis?

Re-erecting a ruined structure using its own fallen material, with any new material kept minimal and visually distinguishable. It is the standard practice at classical sites.

Where did Stonehenge's stones come from?

The smaller bluestones come from the Preseli Hills in Wales. The large sarsens were matched by chemical analysis in 2020 to West Woods in Wiltshire, about 25 kilometres away. Fifty of the fifty-two surviving sarsens came from there.

References

1. Conservation at Stonehenge, English Heritage
2. Stonehenge, early excavations and restoration
3. Stonehenge