Avebury Henge

Avebury henge in Wiltshire is Britain’s largest stone circle and formed part of a vast complex of monuments built and used over 2000 years. The story of its construction will perhaps never be fully understood.

It seems the earliest structure was a large wooden building, perhaps a house or hall which often featured at the earliest Neolithic settlements. After its demise it became the focus of a square arrangement of stones, now long removed. The building was perhaps built by the first settlers in the area, now revered ancestors, and was immortalised in memory as an example of ‘history-making’. This was eventually followed by the henge ditch and bank, then the huge outer stone circle with two smaller circles inside were raised, then finally two stone avenues were added.

The linear 'z-feature', with the south ring and the southern entrance stones beyond.

Avebury is in a natural ‘bowl’ surrounded by higher chalk ridges, one being the course of the ancient trackway called the Ridgeway. Although the henge is visible from the high ground all around, it’s surprisingly inconspicuous. Many stone circles are prominent in their landscape, designed to be seen, which suggests a different reason for Avebury’s location or purpose. Although, perhaps its size and therefore importance and fame meant it didn’t need to advertise itself. Inside the monument, little is visible of the outside world and it gives the impression of being an enclosed ‘microcosm’. It has often been suggested that circular monuments surrounded by a water-filled ditch are a microcosm of the earth with its surrounding ring of water.

Avebury comprises a circular ditch with an outer bank, 330m in diameter. The ditch was originally nine metres deep; a phenomenal undertaking using only antler picks. It was dug around 2900BC, replacing an earlier, more modest ditch. The stone circle inside comprised 98 huge sarsen stones, weighing up to 100 tonnes, many of which were destroyed or buried during Medieval times. Two smaller circles, around 100m diameter, were built inside the monument, and a variety of other stone features whose original layout and purpose remains unclear. Four causewayed entrances, slightly offset from the cardinal points, are the locations for the modern roads.

The two very different Cove stones in the northern circle.

Avebury’s earliest phase of construction was during the early Neolithic period, but intriguing evidence suggests its importance began long before this point. Many sacred sites in Britain, immortalised in stone during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, were respected by the earlier hunter-gatherers who had populated Britain after the Ice Age. Neolithic settlers, or hunter-gatherers who adopted the farming lifestyle, built these monuments around natural features whose importance was perhaps known to a few and now forgotten or ignored by most. Groves, springs or rock features became an immortalised memory.

Avebury’s biggest sarsen stones, such as the now-destroyed Obelisk in the southern circle, the Cove Stone in the northern circle, and some of the entrance stones, are believed to have been naturally present, in contrast to the majority of the stones which were dragged into place from the nearby downs. Were they subject to millennia-old veneration and the reason for the henge’s location? Intriguingly, some stones at Stonehenge and Stanton Drew are also believed to have been raised in their natural locations, and the capstones of many portal dolmens were also raised in their original positions.

Avebury also incorporated more recent ‘history-making’. Several stones in the monument had been used, perhaps for centuries, as axe-polishing stones or polissoirs while they lay in their natural positions on the downs. These stones with their own histories and stories were then brought to Avebury and incorporated into the vast, story-telling monument.

British culture changed dramatically when people began to master and control their landscape, by clearing forests and growing crops and also by raising monuments which would exist for millennia, but I believe Avebury shows its seed lay in the earlier respect for the natural landscape of people who walked lightly on the land and whose presence left little trace behind.

The northern entrance stone, one of the huge sarsens probably respected for millennia before it was raised.