Windmill Hill

Windmill Hill is the earliest site of the Avebury complex. A causewayed enclosure was built on the hill between 3670-3620BC. This comprised three concentric, ovoid ditches with inner banks and regular causeways to give access.

The ditches are not focused on the hilltop. They are offset to the northeast and the outermost, being 360m in diameter, stretches almost to the bottom of the slope. The reason for this is unclear, but it seems the ditches were designed to enclose pre-existing features such as ritual or offering pits. The ditches may also have respected natural features such as ancient trees which have vanished without archaeological trace. The banks and ditches are almost entirely eroded away; what is visible today is the result of excavation and restoration in the 1930s.

View east from Windmill Hill. The restored ditch is visible in the foreground.

The site was used for occasional feasting – large numbers of cattle were slaughtered and eaten on the site – and was perhaps a site for annual gatherings and trade events over a period of around three hundred years. It attracted people from across Britain; pottery from Cornwall and stone axes from Cumbria have been found. Bones from thousands of cattle, pigs, sheep and dogs were carefully deposited in the ditches after feasting events. Cattle skulls were placed in the ditches flanking the entrances. Disarticulated human bones suggest the deposition of revered ancestors, possibly from barrows such as the nearby West Kennet long barrow. In all, the site was a key part of Neolithic spiritual and practical life with a depth we shall probably never understand.

Bronze Age barrow and ditch. The sheep indicate its size.

Windmill Hill was probably chosen because it is the most prominent natural feature of the relatively flat landscape around Avebury, which stretches south and east to the steep escarpments of the chalk downs. The wide, flat hill offers 360º views, including the sites which would one day become the Avebury henge and Silbury Hill.

The site retained its importance long after the enclosure was abandoned and the ditches filled in. The later Neolithic monuments were arranged below it, perhaps so the ‘founding fathers’ could watch over them, and several Bronze Age barrows were erected on the hill, over two thousand years later, including one on the highest point which now dominates the hillside.

Unlike the more famous monuments, Windmill Hill is now largely forgotten and sees few visitors except sheep.