English Heritage has enlisted the help of volunteers to test build three Neolithic houses that will be the centrepiece of an outdoor gallery planned for the new £27m Stonehenge visitor centre, currently under construction.

Rare evidence of English Neolithic buildings unearthed near Stonehenge is informing the build and lessons learned from the experiment will be used to recreate the exhibit at the visitor centre.

Excavation by Professor Mike Parker Pearson has unveiled floors of the houses and stake holes where the walls once stood but the above ground appearance of the houses is unknown.

The current project will test different materials and see which ones work best.

Materials used include 12 tonnes of chalk, 2,500 rods of hazel and willow wattling, 10 oak logs, 600 bundles of sedge, 600 bundles of water reed and hundreds of timber stakes and rafters.

English Heritage senior properties historian Susan Greaney said: "The reconstructed houses will be an immediate and sensory link to the distant past, and will bring visitors as close as they can to appreciate what life was like for the extraordinary individuals who built Stonehenge."