Archaeologists have discovered a new prehistoric monument near Stonehenge.
The discovery of at least 20 massive shafts - more than 10 metres in diameter and five metres deep - forming a circle more than two kilometres in diameter around the Durrington Walls henge.
Coring of the shafts are Neolithic and excavated more than 4,500 years ago - around the time Durrington Walls was built.
This circle of deep shafts is the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Britain.
4,500 ago, the Neolithic peoples who constructed Stonehenge, a masterpiece of engineering, also dug a series of shafts aligned to form a circle spanning 1.2 miles (2km) in diameter.
The structure appears to have been a boundary guiding people to a sacred area because Durrington Walls, one of Britain’s largest henge monuments, is located precisely at its centre.
The site is 1.9 miles north-east of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, near Amesbury, Wiltshire.
Prof Vincent Gaffney, a leading archaeologist on the project, said: “This is an unprecedented find of major significance within the UK. Key researchers on Stonehenge and its landscape have been taken aback by the scale of the structure and the fact that it hadn’t been discovered until now so close to Stonehenge.”
