While visiting Salisbury, I suddenly got the urge to jump on the bus and visit Stonehenge to try and see the stone that Tess probably slept on towards the end of Thomas Hardy's 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'.
Off instinct and rational guesswork, I took it to be the horizontal, bed-type stone in the middle of the stone circle above, and in the bottom right of the picture below:
Have just read from other accounts on the internet that the bed-shaped stone above is likely to be the stone that Tess rested on before being arrested there at dawn.
Of course, Stonehenge is a fitting spiritual resting place for Tess before her later execution at Winchester jail for her murder of Alec Durbyfield, as she symbolises a high pagan priestess in the middle of the stones:
Of course, this high pagan image of Tess starts at the beginning of the novel when she is seen participating in the fertility dance:
Moreover, it is also at Stonehenge where Angel Clare stresses to Tess that the place, with all its pagan significance, easily pre-dates Christian time and meaning, symbolising something more dynamically and vibrantly human. Of course, Tess lying on the central bed-stone in the stone circle, which lies on top of an ancient burial chamber, symbolises Tess' upcoming death/execution.
Just read that Thomas Hardy was fascinated by the ghost-type sounds that can be made through the wind passing through the gaps in the stone circle. But it was difficult to focus on this auditory sense at due to the sheer force of numbers of (mainly foreign) visitors near the stone circle:
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