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Not immediately as impressive as Stonehenge, Avebury is a much larger site yet with a more intimate feel to it. The village has grown in among the stones. Indeed many can be found broken down and embedded into the walls of buildings. Take a walk around the great bank before crossing the ditch and walking among the stones themselves. Visit also the Museum and the Church, part Anglo Saxon, part Norman, part 1812. Browse in the antique shop, still selling Alexander Keiller's marmalade jars, albeit empty!  |
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The sarsen stones are from the surrounding downs and unlike those of Stonehenge have not been worked into formal shapes. They do though appear to have been chosen by size and shape for their various locations. Over many thousands of years some stones fell down or were pulled down and broken up for building materials. |
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Wealthy marmalade magnate and amateur archaeologist, Alexander Keiller spent a great deal of his fortune reconstructing the various circles and avenues of stone at Avebury. He even went so far as to buy up properties in the village and pull them down in an attempt to bring the place back to his vision of its former glory.
His ideas are now frowned upon by many and most people agree that the village would have been best left in the form it had assumed over the years, rather than the fragmented shape it now has due to his intervention. |
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Be that as it may when the village first came into the hands of the National Trust it did not fare much better it is only lately that attempts to move time back have stopped. For a few years recently a couple of the largest stones have been barricaded off for fear that they may fall and injure someone. An expensive excavation was eventually mounted to secure them in concrete below ground level, only to find that like icebergs there was more below the surface than anyone had thought and they were in fact quite safe all along. The barricades have gone and we can all enjoy uninterrupted view of the stones once more. |
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There is a visitors car park on the southern side of the village, just inside the speed limit signs. You then approach by a short, level footpath, with the village school on one side and the local cricket field on the other. Very quiet on this early Autumn morning. |
| If you come into Avebury by road from the south this sharp left bend and clump of trees marks the gap in the outerbank. The stone on the right is the start of Kennet Avenue, off towards Silbury Hill. |
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The same group of trees from the opposite side, the road crosses the ditch, casting a deep shadow in the early morning light. |
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| Avebury just wouldn't be the same without its sheep. Watch where you put your feet! |
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Avebury is now behind you, the road north to Wroughton and Swindon |
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be responsible for any loss due to errors or omissions.