Cultural depictions of Stonehenge

From this period onwards, artists made images of barrows, standing stones, and excavated objects which increasingly drew on highly imaginative ideas about the prehistoric people who created them.

Poets and other writers deepened the impact of this visual material by imagining ancient pasts and mythologising the distant roots of the growing British Empire.

During the early nineteenth century it was artists such as John Constable and J. M. W. Turner who helped to make the megalithic sites a part of the popular imagination and understanding of Britain's past.

This was already a feature of artistic and literary works of the period and provided the theoretical basis for a growing appreciation of desolate landscapes and ancient ruins.

So proud to hint yet keepThy secrets, thou lov'st to stand and hearThe plain resounding to the whirlwind's sweepInmate of lonesome Nature's endless year.Turner's and Constable's paintings were arranged for a romantic effect and deviated from the actual state of the stones.

[1] The Shell Oil Company commissioned the artist Edward McKnight Kauffer to paint a series of posters during the interwar period, to be used to encourage tourism by car owners.

In an episode of the sitcom Frasier, the titular son (Kelsey Grammer) begrudgingly purchases his father, Martin (John Mahoney), a deluxe big-screen TV set with four surround sound speakers as a birthday gift—in a futile effort to one-up his brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce).

Upon arriving home and seeing the four tall, vertical speakers enveloping his living room, Frasier sardonically remarks, "Oh, dear God...it's Stonehenge!"