There are besides these two large _untrimmed_ sarsen stones, one standing some distance outside the vallum, one recumbent lying on the vallum; both nearly, but not quite, in the sunrise line as viewed from the centre of the sarsen circle. These are termed the “Friar’s Heel” and “Slaughter Stone” respectively.
I will deal with (1) first, and begin by another quotation from Mr. Cunnington, who displayed great acumen in dealing with the smaller stones not sarsens.
“The most important consideration connected with the smaller stones, and one which in its archæological bearing has been too much overlooked, is the fact of their having been brought from a great distance. I expressed an opinion on this subject in a lecture delivered at Devizes more than eighteen years ago, and I have been increasingly impressed with it since. I believe that these stones would not have been brought from such a distance to a spot where an abundance of building stones equally suitable in every respect already existed, unless some special or religious value had been attached to them. This goes far to prove that Stonehenge was _originally a temple_, and neither a monument raised to the memory of the dead, nor an astronomical calendar or almanac.
“It has been suggested that they were Danams, or the offerings of successive votaries. Would there in such case have been such uniformity of design, or would they have been all alike of foreign materials? I would make one remark about the small impost of a trilithon of syenite, now lying prostrate within the circle. One writer has followed another in taking it for granted that there must have been a second, corresponding with it, on the opposite side. Of this there is neither proof nor record, not a trace of one having been seen by any person who has written on the subject. This small impost, not being of sarsen, but syenite, must have belonged to the original old circle; _it may even have suggested to the builders of the present Stonehenge the idea of the large imposts, and trilithons with their tenons and mortices_.”
In Prof. Gowland’s examination of the contents of the holes necessarily dug in his operations, it was found over and over again, indeed almost universally, that the quantity of blue stone chippings was much greater than that from the sarsen stones. While the sarsen stones had only been worked or tooled on their surface, the blue stones had been hewed and trimmed in extraordinary fashion; indeed it is stated by Prof. Judd that they had been reduced to half their original dimensions in this process, the chippings almost equalling the volume of the stones themselves.