Stonehenge Midsummer’s Day, June 24th, is the longest day of the year. On that day you can see a very old custom at Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, England. It is one of Europe’s biggest stone circles. A lot of the stones are ten or twelve metres high.The earliest part of Stonehenge is nearly 5,000 years old. But what was Stonehenge? A holy place?A market?A magic circle? Or it was a kind of calendar? Scientists believe that the Druids used it for a calendar.The people who started Stonehenge were very primitive. They used no metal and their tools were made of stone, bone and wood.The builders could not read or write, so they left no records of the work. There have been many theories about Stonehenge. Some people said that travellers from outer space had built it. Others said that it was a “ powerhouse ” as it had been built in the centre of enormous electrical energy.The Druids were the priests in Britain 2,000 years ago. They used the sun and the stones at Stonehenge to know the start of months and seasons.There are Druids in Britain today, too. And every June 24th a lot of them go to Stonehenge. On that morning the sun shines on one famous stone – the Heel stone. For the Druids this is a very important moment in the year. But for a lot of British people it’s just a strange old custom.
