bbc.com
Today Stonehenge is England's most important monument, but 100 years ago it was up for sale. The man who bought it helped seal its fate.
Standing on Salisbury Plain, its stones visible from afar, Stonehenge has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1986 and attracts a million visitors a year.
So it's strange to think that England's most significant monument was once bought by a barrister as a present to his wife. Or so one theory goes. Another is that he feared a rich American might take it.
Whatever his motivation, 100 years ago, on 21 September 1915, Cecil Chubb paid £6,600 for the monument at an auction in Salisbury, Wiltshire. It happened, he said, "on a whim".
Chubb's wife Mary was reportedly less than grateful for the romantic gesture, possibly because the price equated to as much as £680,000 in today's money. "It's said that Mary wanted Cecil to buy a set of curtains at the auction," says Stonehenge's curator, Heather Sebire. "And he came back with something rather different."
Standing on Salisbury Plain, its stones visible from afar, Stonehenge has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1986 and attracts a million visitors a year.
So it's strange to think that England's most significant monument was once bought by a barrister as a present to his wife. Or so one theory goes. Another is that he feared a rich American might take it.
Whatever his motivation, 100 years ago, on 21 September 1915, Cecil Chubb paid £6,600 for the monument at an auction in Salisbury, Wiltshire. It happened, he said, "on a whim".
Chubb's wife Mary was reportedly less than grateful for the romantic gesture, possibly because the price equated to as much as £680,000 in today's money. "It's said that Mary wanted Cecil to buy a set of curtains at the auction," says Stonehenge's curator, Heather Sebire. "And he came back with something rather different."