Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain that attracts thousands of tourists annually.

It is arguably one of the most culturally significant and mysterious landmarks in the world, a real head-scratcher for all who visit.

Archaeologists believe it was created, built, or 'stood up' between 3000 BC and 2000 BC, and has fascinated people ever since.

It has been a site of great significance and spirituality since its creation, but no one really knows what its original purpose was meant for. But, that hasn't stopped people guessing.

The Telegraph recently looked at 7 of the most bizarre things to be associated with Stonehenge.

Pop musicians love the name

Richie Havens called his 1970 album Stonehenge and featured the standing stones on the cover. 

Stonedhenge is the second studio album of English blues-rockers Ten Years After.

Spoof-rockers Spinal Tap’s song Stonehenge – performed with hoods and dry ice – contains the lyric, “Stonehenge! ’Tis a magic place/Where the moon doth rise with a dragon’s face/Stonehenge! Where the virgins lie/And the prayers of devils fill the midnight sky”. 

A progressive metal band formed in 1992 in Hungary was called, Stonehenge. 

Claims of ancient astronauts 

Erich von Däniken’s 1968 book Chariots of the Gods?, claimed numerous monuments, including Stonehenge, may have been built by extraterrestrials. 

His hypothesis is based upon “interpretations” of Mayan iconography and mysterious landmarks around the world such as the Nazca Lines. 

It was the focus of a mass arrest

In 1985, more than 600 new-age travellers were en route to celebrate the Stonehenge Free Festival when their convoy was stopped seven miles short of the landmark by a contingent of some 1,300 policemen.

The confrontation turned violent and went on for several hours before 537 were taken into custody in one of the biggest mass arrests of civilians in the history of England. The event is known as The Battle of the Beanfield.

Christopher Wren graffiti

Graffiti from across the centuries is present on many of the stones at Stonehenge. 

Stone 52 bears the name “Wren” and is thought to have been chiselled by St Paul’s Cathedral architect Sir Christopher Wren, whose family had a home nearby.

Recommended reading:

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Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

It plays a prominent role in 'Tess of the D’Urbervilles'.

While escaping north, Tess and her husband Angel pause at Stonehenge. Tess feels that her end is near, so she has Angel promise to marry someone else after her death. As it’s night and they’re tired, Tess sleeps on one of the stone “altars”.

Near daybreak, the two are surrounded by police who take Tess into custody. For her part, Tess is glad that the end has come. Literary critics say the scene indicates a relationship “between the symbolical sacrifice of Tess at Stonehenge and her association with fertility, ritual, and mythic cycles of seasonal death and rebirth”.

Surviving Noah's flood

Henry Browne's 'An Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury, in the County of Wilts, Pointing Out Their Origin and Character, Through Considerations Hitherto Unnoticed', published in 1923, regarded Stonehenge as one of the few ancient structures that survived the Old Testament flood. 

Bought at an auction in 1915

Stonehenge was purchased for £6,600 by local businessman Cecil Chubb, who went to the auction allegedly to buy dining chairs. It happened, he said, “on a whim”.

Chubb’s wife Mary was reportedly unmoved by the romantic gesture; the price was around £570,000 in today’s money.