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Stonehenge Theories:

A Roman Temple

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Stonehenge at sunrise. John Webb suggested that Stonehenge was the ruins of a Tuscan-style temple constructed by the Romans.

In 1620, the eccentric English architect Inigo Jones was commissioned by King James I to document the structure of Stonehenge and investigate its origin. In 1655, three years after Jones’ death, his son-in-law and assistant John Webb published a book, The Most Remarkable Antiquity of Great Britain, Vulgarly Called Stone-Heng, Restored, supposedly based upon notes left behind by the architect. The book depicts Stonehenge as the ruins of a Tuscan-style temple, built by the Romans during their occupation of Britain in the First through Fifth Centuries AD, to venerate Coelus, the Roman god of the sky. The Roman theory was in vogue for only a few years before it was attacked by another writer, Dr. Walter Charleton, who argued that Stonehenge actually had been built by the Danish invaders who followed the Romans. Modern archaeological research, of course, eventually would show that Stonehenge predated both groups by thousands of years.

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