Avebury Stone Circle

Avebury is the opposite of Stonehenge in almost every way. The circle is around 330 metres across, big enough that a village and two public roads sit inside it, and the sarsens are unshaped lumps rather than dressed and lintelled blocks. There are no ropes: you walk up and put a hand on them. The bank and ditch enclosing the stones were dug with antler picks in the centuries around 2500 BC, and the ditch was originally far deeper than it now looks. Many stones were buried or broken up in later centuries; Alexander Keiller re-erected what he could in the 1930s and marked the missing ones with concrete posts.

History

Avebury was built over several hundred years in the 3rd millennium BC, not as one monument but in stages; Aubrey Burl suggests about 3000 BC for the central Cove, 2900 BC for the inner circle, 2600 BC for the outer circle and henge and around 2400 BC for the avenues, and the henge measures 347.4 metres across, with an outer circle of 331.6 metres, the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. By the Iron Age it had been largely abandoned, visitors came from nearby Roman towns, and early medieval settlers lived beside it; stones were still being broken up when William Stukeley recorded the site between 1719 and 1724, Harold St George Gray showed between 1908 and 1922 that its builders dug 11 metres into the chalk with red deer antlers, and Alexander Keiller dug and re-erected stones in the 1930s, so that, as is said, Avebury today is largely his creation (Wikipedia, Avebury).

Highlights

• The great outer circle - unshaped sarsens inside a bank and ditch 330 metres wide.
• West Kennet Avenue - paired stones running south from the henge for over a mile.
• Silbury Hill - the largest prehistoric mound in Europe, seen from the road below.
• The Alexander Keiller Museum - finds from the 1930s digs, shown in the old stable and barn.

When to go

The stones are open at all hours and free, which makes early morning and late evening the best of it, especially with mist sitting in the ditch. The summer solstice draws a large gathering and heavy parking restrictions. Museum and shop keep National Trust hours. Autumn and winter mud is real, so boots rather than trainers.

What to expect

Roads run through the circle carrying traffic, and the plan is hard to grasp on the ground without the aerial photographs on the boards. Parking is charged and some way from the stones. Sheep graze the field, with everything that implies underfoot. Silbury Hill cannot be climbed, and West Kennet Long Barrow is a further walk uphill.

Nearby

West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill and the Ridgeway path along the downs.

Key facts