Evidence of a large settlement full of houses dating back to 2,600 BC has been discovered near the ancient stone monument of Stonehenge in southwest England, scientists said on Tuesday.

They suspect inhabitants of the houses, forming the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain, built the stone circle at Stonehenge generally thought to have been a temple, burial ground or an astronomy site between 3,000 and 1,600 BC.

"We found the remains of eight houses," Mike Parker Pearson, a professor of archaeology at Sheffield University, said in a teleconference to announce the discovery.