The Heel Stone is a single large block of sarsen stone standing within the Avenue outside the entrance of the Stonehenge earthwork in

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

, England. In section it is sub-rectangular, with a minimum thickness of , rising to a tapered top about high. Excavation has shown that a further is buried in the ground. It is from the centre of Stonehenge circle. It leans towards the southwest nearly 27 degrees from the

vertical Vertical is a geometric term of location which may refer to: * Vertical direction, the direction aligned with the direction of the force of gravity, up or down * Vertical (angles), a pair of angles opposite each other, formed by two intersecting s ...

. The stone has an overall girth of and weighs about 35 tons. It is surrounded by the Heelstone Ditch.

Myths Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), ...

and legends of the

Devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of ...

striking a "Friar's Heel" with a stone resulted in its eccentric name, ''Heel Stone''. Some claim "Friar's Heel" is a corruption of "Freyja's He-ol" or "Freyja Sul", from the Nordic goddess

Freyja In Norse paganism, Freyja (Old Norse "(the) Lady") is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future). Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chario ...

and (allegedly) the Welsh words for "way" and "Sunday" respectively. It is doubtful whether any prehistoric standing stone has experienced as many name changes and interpretations. Only in the past three decades have

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...

s used the name ''Heel Stone'' consistently.

References

Atkinson Atkinson may refer to: Places *Atkinson, Nova Scotia, Canada * Atkinson, Dominica, a village in Dominica *Atkinson, Illinois, U.S. * Atkinson, Indiana, U.S. *Atkinson, Maine, U.S. *Atkinson Lake, a lake in Minnesota, U.S. *Atkinson, Nebraska, U. ...

, R J C, ''Stonehenge'' (Penguin Books, 1956) * Cleal, Walker, & Montague, ''Stonehenge in its Landscape'' (London, English Heritage 1995) * Cunliffe, B, & Renfrew, C, ''Science and Stonehenge'' (The British Academy 92, Oxford University Press 1997) * Hawley, Lt-Col W, ''Report on the Excavations at Stonehenge during the season of 1923'' (The Antiquaries Journal 5, Oxford University Press, 1925)

References

Further reading