Part 4: Vale of Pewsey
Avebury While it doesn’t have the globally iconic recognition of Stonehenge, Avebury is arguably a much more important site at the centre of a long-running timeline of prehistoric monuments, and is the largest stone circle in the world. It forms part of the World Heritage Site along with Stonehenge and surrounding monuments. The Great Henge still survives as a massive bank and ditch with four causewayed entrances. The bank is still four or five metres high, but once towered 17m above a 9m-deep ditch on the inside. The bank and ditch have four entrances, the southernmost aligning with the Avenue to the Sanctuary. Within the Great Henge are three stone circles. An outer circuit of around 100 stones and then two inner circles arranged in the north and south sections, each with a large centre point stone – known as the Great Obelisk and the Cove or Devil’s
Brandirons respectively. The exact timeline of the various ditch and bank phases and what appeared when is unknown, but all the stones are spaced around 11m apart and the site was active from 2850 BC to 2200 BC. Unfortunately, many of the stones were buried and destroyed by the Christian church during the Middle Ages, so much of what we know is based on records and maps made by John Aubrey and William Stukeley. Thankfully, the site was bought in the 1930s by ‘marmalade millionaire’ Alexander Keiller, who cleared away modern buildings and re-erected many of the stones to create its current appearance. The local Avebury museum just to the west of the site also bears his name.
Avebury Sanctuary Nowadays, the Sanctuary (OS grid ref: SU 118 680) is just a small circular area with a ring of concrete pads marking the positions of large posts which were later replaced with large stones. Around 3000 BC though, it was clearly an extremely important site. Starting as a single small hut in a clearing it became a much larger building, eventually growing to a 40m
diameter stone and post circle that linked directly onto West Kennet Avenue. With no written word to help us decipher its mysteries, the Sanctuary’s purpose remains unknown, but archaeological excavations in the 1930s uncovered feasting remains as well as significant numbers of scattered human remains.
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