IT WAS heartening to read in the Salisbury Journal that thousands of people enjoyed themselves celebrating at the December 2019 Winter Solstice at Stonehenge.

It is recorded that around 5,000 made the trip and they were rewarded by seeing a “stunning sunrise”.

In this week’s ‘Bygone Salisbury’, we travel back to Stonehenge and to New Year’s Eve 1999.

For hundreds of people from all parts of the country, the only place to see in the new millennium was Stonehenge – regarded by many as the world’s oldest timepiece.

Surrounded in mist with no wind and just gentle rain, the ancient stones were indeed mystic as the midnight hour arrived. The silence was broken on the stroke of twelve by the cheers of those standing around the monument’s perimeter fence and then the cloudy sky was lit up by fireworks brought along for the occasion by the revellers.

In the crowd back in 1999 was druid Arthur Pendragon who said that “Stonehenge was the only place to be.” He had arrived three hours before midnight and did not leave until well after dawn on New Year’s Day. Content to remain outside the fence, Arthur Pendragon just wanted to be at Stonehenge for the “once in a lifetime event”.

“If you want a benchmark of time then this is the place to be alongside the oldest clock in the world,” he said.

Local people as well as visitors parked their cars on the tracks alongside the ancient stones, remaining all night to see the dawn of the first day of the New Year and a new century.

Police and security guards kept a low profile and there was no hint of trouble. “It was a peaceful and a happy atmosphere throughout,” a police spokesman said.

Likewise, I wish readers of ‘Bygone Salisbury’ a peaceful and happy 2020.