Apologies if this topic has already appeared on your monitor (it was one of those topics that appeared in the Latest Forum Topics on the Home Page but not on some people's Forums page).
The article* by Simon Jenkins in last Friday's Guardian is worth a read (the word hospital by the way wasn't coined by Jenkins but by the Guardian editors). Basically, what Jenkins is saying is that (based on Professors Geoff Wainwright and Timothy Darvill's research), the bluestones were brought from Preseli because of their powers of healing. Jenkins writes that at Preseli there is a, "...plethora of springs on the hillside. Many "holy wells" have been ascribed miraculous healing powers throughout history. But Preseli's are remarkable for their number and for the dolmens, enclosures and barrows surrounding the area. More remarkable still, in front of each are bluestones, rearranged and decorated as if to create an altar and a pool. This was clearly a place of prehistoric pilgrimage, and the bluestones were thought to hold its magic."
Well, if nothing else, it's another theory for the pot. There is also, intriguingly, Layamon's poem, Brut, of 1215 describing Stonehenge -
The stones are great
And magic power they have
Men that are sick
Fare to that stone
And they wash that stone
And with that water bathe away their sickness
* http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1961517,00.html
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