'Give Stonehenge back': Calls for ancient stone circle to be returned to Wales
A tourism boss has called for Stonehenge to be returned to Wales - so it can become an attraction for millions of visitors.Farm park owner Lyn Jenkins says the historic stone circle should be "reclaimed" from Salisbury Plain by Welsh people after it was moved around 5,000 years ago.Experts believe the bluestones at the monument's centre originated from the Preseli mountains in Wales before being taken 175-miles to their home at Salisbury Plain.Mr Jenkins said: "Greece is trying to reclaim the Elgin Marbles. What if Wales tries reclaiming Stonehenge?"They can re-erect it here, in Cardigan Island Coastal Farm Park, Gwbert, from where we can view the Preseli Hills in the distance."If not, why doesn’t Mark Drakeford send Boris Johnson a bill for a few million pounds? After all, Stonehenge is an extremely lucrative tourist attraction."
Mr Jenkins, who owns the Cardigan Island Coastal Farm Park, wrote to his local Pembrokeshire newspaper the Western Telegraph with his call to repatriate the stone circle.He said that "being a historian" Boris Johnson "may well point out that the 5,000-year-old monolith was not received by the English, since they have only been in what is now England for a mere 1,500 years."He added: "It was already well-known that the bluestones at the centre of Stonehenge are originally from the Preseli Hills of north Pembrokeshire. The geological evidence proves that."However, if they were once part of an edifice in Waun Mawn, Preseli Hills, Wales, then they must have been physically moved by man, not by ice during an Ice Age, as many have surmised."How Welsh forefathers, ‘Ancient Britons’, moved such massive stones from west Wales to Wiltshire is absolutely amazing."
Meanwhile a petition has been set up by Welsh nationalists also calling for the stones to be returned to Wales.Organiser Iwan ap Dafydd wrote: "The circumstances of this removal are impossible to determine therefore it would be prudent that they should be returned to their original location."The return of these stones will be an economic and social benefit to the people of Pembrokeshire and Wales."