English Heritage unveils recreation of 4,500-year-old Neolithic hall near Stonehenge

Like the nearby stone circle, the building perfectly aligns with the winter solstice. “When we got the frame in on the solstice morning, I was here, and I stood there, my shadow cast on the middle post at the back,” Winter said.

The project forms the first phase of an educational expansion by English Heritage. Alongside the hall, a new learning centre housing the Clore Discovery Lab and Weston Learning Studio is scheduled to open by the end of 2026.

Iona Keen, English Heritage’s head of learning and interpretation, said the organisation’s goal was to double its educational capacity to nearly 100,000 students annually over the next five years. Keen said the site and its new resources would be completely free to any educational or youth group.

“The Neolithic period is firmly on the national curriculum,” Keen said, adding that the interactive hall would allow children to “step back in time” by gathering around an open fire to make prehistoric cheese and pinch pots. “You learn by doing, and you understand by having a go and trying to work it out yourself.”

Luke Winter at the site of Kusuma Neolithic Hall near Stonehenge. The £1m project is in the final stages of construction and will be open to the public this summer. Photograph: Christopher Ison

The project aims to understand the wider Stonehenge landscape. Stonehenge’s curator, Win Scutt said Stonehenge and the barrows and dwellings surrounding the Neolithic monument were driven by a “society that wanted connection”.

Scutt said: “This whole thing is about social society, not science,” with the camaraderie and “feeling of belonging” generating the motivation to build. Rather than being “obsessed with individualism” like modern society, these groups used massive cooperative projects as a medium for collective representation, he said.

He said the monuments and other structures would have been a “pure expression of the society”, revealing the instincts of the Neolithic peoples: “Now we’re all together, let’s create something that represents us.”

For Sarah Davis and James Humphrey, two volunteers, the project was a transformative experience. Reflecting on the monumental human effort required by the original builders, Davis said: “It’s just amazing to think of the people who actually built the original structure.”

Humphrey said: “It really brings history to life when you’re actually doing it yourself.”