Durrington Walls

  

Reconstruction of Durrington Walls, showing the avenue, river, and timber circle.

Durrington Walls, found two miles from Stonehenge, is one of the greatest henge monuments in Britain, and part of the vast religious complex which stretches across the chalklands of Salisbury Plain.

The henge today survives as a chalk bank, originally three metres high and over a mile long, enclosing an area of 42 acres, with an internal ditch 16 metres wide and six metres deep. This vast earthwork enclosed a huge settlement, with up to a thousand wattle and chalk houses divided into discrete communities. The ditch and bank were dug around 2500BC, destroying many of the outer houses, and is linked to the increasing elaboration and enclosure of already ancient ritual sites, and also to the raising of the huge sarsens at Stonehenge.

The extent of the henge.

Durrington Walls was closely linked to Stonehenge. Researchers now think that people came to Durrington Walls, from across the chalklands and also much further afield, including Wales and northern Britain, bringing livestock and trade goods to an annual gathering at the midwinter solstice where community relationships were reaffirmed, livestock exchanged and marriage partners found. Two timber circles, one found immediately in front of the entrance and containing at its greatest extent six concentric rings of huge posts, have been linked to religious rites and funerary ceremony. Likely people brought cremated remains to Durrington to be deposited in the river, or for a chosen few, to be deposited inside the banks of Stonehenge after a short journey down the river. Midwinter has always been seen as a time of rebirth and renewal, when the sun begins again its annual journey across the sky, and has often been seen as the time when souls cross into the next world or alternatively join those souls waiting to be reborn.

The site of the avenue leading to the river.

Like Stonehenge, Durrington Walls had an avenue leading down to the river Avon, fifteen metres wide and with five-metre chalk banks on either side. Like Stonehenge, this avenue was based on a natural feature. Beneath the avenue, on the same alignment, was a ‘road’ of natural flint. This aligned perfectly on the midsummer solstice sunset. This is the opposite alignment of the Stonehenge avenue, and adds to the theory that they are spiritual ‘opposites’ – one linked to the living and one linked to the dead.

The focus of Durrington Walls, towards the fertile farmlands, the river and the rising sun.

Durrington Walls is on steeply sloping ground, which was terraced to build the hundreds of houses, with an area of high levelled ground furthest from the entrance where five elaborate enclosed buildings were raised. Perhaps they were chieftain’s houses or houses of the ancestors or spirits. They certainly had a natural command over the site. Unlike Stonehenge, which is on a bleak and exposed hillside which emphasises its liminality, Durrington Walls faces southeast, towards the rising sun which would give light and warmth to the community. It is sheltered from the prevailing winds and offers good views over and easy access to the river which provided nourishment in both practical and spiritual sense. It certainly feels like a place which was buzzing with life.