Just outside the Stonehenge visitor centre are five newly constructed Neolithic Houses.  For some time I have been following a blog that showed the houses being constructed and I enjoyed seeing the finished result.

From the English Heritage website:

Five Neolithic Houses furnished with replica Neolithic axes, pottery and other artifacts, reveal the type of homes that the builders of the ancient monument might have lived in four and half thousand years ago.

The dwellings situated just outside the visitor and exhibition centre, are surprisingly bright and airy spaces and consist of a single room measuring 5 metres on each side with white chalk walls and floors designed to reflect sunlight and capture the heat from the fire. When fires are lit, the smoke from the hearth filters up through a thatched roof – knotted or tied straw carefully secured onto a hazel woven frame. Around the walls stands wooden or woven furniture – beds, seating, storage and shelving.

The Neolithic Houses help to re-connect the ancient stones with the people that lived and worked in the Stonehenge landscape. Visitors can step through the door of these houses and get a real sense of what everyday life might have been like when Stonehenge was built.

The re-created houses are closely based on the remains of Neolithic houses discovered during excavations in 2006 and 2007 at Durrington Walls, a large ceremonial earthwork enclosure, just over a mile to the north-east of Stonehenge. Radiocarbon dating showed that these buildings were built at around the same time as the large sarsen stones were being put up at Stonehenge, in approximately 2,500 BC.