Legend states that Merlin summoned the stones that make up Stonehenge from the Giant's Circle in Ireland.
Mid-12th Century pseudo-historian Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose book Historia Regum Britanniae (“History of the Kings of Britain”) presented the legend of King Arthur as fact, was perhaps the first to come up with an elaborate, fanciful explanation for Stonehenge’s existence. According to Geoffrey, the monument’s bluestones originated in Africa, where ancient giants scooped them up because of their healing properties and transported them to the mythical Mount Killaraus in Ireland, where they formed the Giants’ Circle. But when Aurelius Ambrosius, King of the Britons, wanted to create a memorial to slain warriors, the magician Merlin suggested to him that the stones would make excellent building material. The king sent an army to defeat the Irish in battle, but they were unable to move the stones, until Merlin used his sorcery to dismantle the structure and transport it across the sea—proving, in the process, that the supernatural was more potent than brute force.
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We know almost nothing about who built Stonehenge and why. A popular theory advanced in the 19th century was that the Druids, a people that existed in Britain before the Roman conquest, had built it as a temple. Modern archaeological techniques, though, have dated Stonehenge and we now know that it was completed at least a 1,000 years before the Druids came to power. If Druids used Stonehenge for their ceremonies they got the site secondhand. Despite this, modern Druids have laid claim to Stonehenge and an annual ceremony takes place at Stonehenge during Summer solstice, one of the ring's astronomical alignments.
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