Avebury: The Other Stonehenge
Author: Bruce Burnett
Added: February 6, 2007
Thirty kilometers (18 miles) north of world-famous Stonehenge
in Wiltshire, England, is its lesser known,
but larger cousin, Avebury.
Built at the same time as the second phase of Stonehenge,
around 1600-2000BC, the stone circle at Avebury is
the largest in the world.
Neolithic inhabitants of Britain built the first phase of
Stonehenge about 500 years earlier. The second phase and the
henge at Avebury were the work of the "Beaker" people,
immigrants from continental Europe who may have introduced
the idea of sun or sky worship. They were named after their
habit of burying pottery-drinking vessels with their dead.
The Beaker people quickly established dominance over the
indigenous tribes, partly due to their facility with metal,
the main source of which was in Ireland. To maintain a supply
of these metals they established trade routes, one of which
followed the south coast of Wales. This probably accounts
for the Beaker traders' familiarity with the Pembrokeshire
bluestone, which they selected for use at Stonehenge.
The stones at Avebury which, unlike those at Stonehenge,
have not been dressed to shape are a very hard sandstone occurring
naturally on the local downs. They are called Sarsen Stones,
possibly from the word "Saracen" meaning heathen.
In its original form the main circle of 98 stones surrounded
two smaller circles of about 30 stones each, and there were
still smaller arrangements of stones within these. The banks
and ditches form a circle nearly one mile in circumference.
The ditches, before thousands of years of erosion, used to
be twice as deep and the bank, made up of chalk rubble from
the ditches, was considerably higher and deeper. Originally,
the henge would have been encircled by a startling white bank
and ditch.
People without machines or the wheel carried out the great
task of building Avebury. Ditches were dug with picks and
rakes made of antlers, bone shovels and wooden tools. The
chalk was moved in baskets.
The great stones themselves, from the Marlborough Downs,
five kilometers (three miles) away, were probably dragged
with leather ropes, wooden levers, tree trunk sledges and
considerable manpower. As many as 100 men would have taken
several days to drag one stone to Avebury.
The largest stone still standing weights about 67 tons. The
Devil's Chair, standing by the road to Marlborough, is the
second largest at about 56 tons.
There has been far more destruction of the stones at Avebury
than at Stonehenge. Most of the wrecking was done in the 18th-century,
either to clear the ground for cultivation or to use the stone
as building material. The stones were broken up by lighting
fires beneath them and then pouring water over them.
In the 14th-century some of the stones were buried. In fact
one man, a barber or surgeon, was killed when one of the stones
he was attempting to demolish or bury fell on him. A pair
of scissors and a lancet were found next to his skeleton and
the stone is now called the Barber's Stone.
The henge at Avebury is now a National Trust property and
boasts an information center, a National Trust shop, the Alexander
Keiler Museum and a restaurant. In the village of Avebury
itself, encircled by the henge, good food and ale is available
at the local pub. To get there from London, take the M4 west
and turn south on the A4361 just past Swindon, a distance
of about 140km (85 miles). Bristol is 50km (30 miles) due
west on the old A4.
Bruce Burnett, has won four Pacific Asia Travel Association
(PATA) Gold awards for travel journalism. Read more of Bruce
Burnett's travel writing on his websites: http://www.globalramble.com
and http://www.bruceburnett.ca
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