The Thornborough Henges

The southeast entrance of the central henge.

The Thornborough Henges, just north of Ripon in Yorkshire, are thought to be a part of a ritual landscape once as important as Stonehenge.

The three large henges, each 240m in diameter, were built as a single concept around 2800BC. They form a slightly offset line which has been suggested to represent the stars of Orion’s Belt. This feature has also been proposed for the three stone circles in Orkney and the three pyramids of Giza.

The three henges, showing their arrangement akin to Orion’s Belt. (Tony Newbould, Wikicommons).

The southern henge is now almost entirely destroyed. The central henge comprises an outer bank, surviving to three metres high in places, then a wide berm and an inner ditch with two causeways, now barely visible. The inner area, which has the feel of an inner sanctum and was perhaps screened with timber, comprises around half the area of the henge. The two entrances align with the midwinter sunrise and the midsummer sunset.

The ditch and causeway of the northern henge.

The northern henge, which is now covered with trees, is the best preserved. Like the other henges, it comprises an outer bank with an inner berm around 15 metres in diameter, then a ditch surviving to around four metres deep. This ditch is perfectly dry, even in the wettest periods, so presumably was never intended to contain water. Perhaps these ditches were a statement of partition, segregating the innermost area of the henge where only a select few were permitted, from the outer area where all people could congregate.

The entrances of this henge again align with the midwinter sunrise and the midsummer sunset, and the central henge lies in their direct view. The northern entrance opens out onto the gentle slope of the hillside which soon disappears from view. This seems to emphasise that this is the end of the monument.

The bank and inner berm of the northern henge.

Thornborough was important long before the henges were built. Two cursuses, a little-understood type of monument of which the most famous is at Stonehenge, lie nearby and predate the henges by perhaps a thousand years. One passes by the north henge, and the second passes beneath the central henge and continues towards the river. It is suggested they are a commemoration of an ancient processional way.

The central henge, looking towards the northern henge in the distant trees.

The henges are on a fairly flat hilltop where they would have been prominent from a wide area. They are a few hundred metres from the River Ure, one of two important rivers in Yorkshire which were a focus for ritual monuments, on slightly higher ground so as to be safe from flood risk. On the horizon to the east is the scarp of the North Yorkshire Moors, and the henges, once coated in brilliant white gypsum, would have been clearly visible from this high ground. And it is from this point that their arrangement, reflecting Orion’s Belt, would have been noticeable.

The River Ure near Thornborough

Thornborough is on one of the major ancient routeways from the Midlands to the North, and also to the East to the Vale of Pickering. This is the point where the land changes from the vast flat plain of York to the hills of the Yorkshire Dales. Another reason for choosing this site is the band of underlying gypsum in the area, especially prone to forming huge sinkholes without warning which can on occasion swallow houses. This dangerous and unpredictable phenomenon, perhaps associated with openings to the chthonic otherworld, is likely a reason for the henges’ location.

A sinkhole in a limestone area. (Peter Dean, Wikicommons).

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.

Marden Henge

Marden’s bank, inner ditch and northern entrance.

Marden Henge, about ten miles north of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, is one of the biggest henges in Britain and one of the most unusual. It is in a crook of the Avon, the river which is closely linked to Stonehenge, and the river replaces the bank for part of its perimeter.

The henge, roughly oval and 500 metres across at its widest point, had an entrance aligned precisely north, and a second to the southeast, linked to a causeway which led to the river. Its bank survives up to three metres high and forty metres wide.

The Avon at Marden

The henge was built on the flat river plain where today, after heavy rain, the mud-laden river can be seen creeping around willow trunks and through the long grass on its banks. It probably once filled the henge ditch and waterlogged the surrounding land. Little can be seen of the surrounding landscape beyond the river plain, with the exception of the ridgeline which marks the start of Salisbury Plain, and water seems to be a key aspect of the monument’s character.

The view across the henge towards the river.

The henge has been associated with the construction of Stonehenge. The huge sarsen stones, incorporated into Stonehenge around 2500BC, were dragged from the Marlborough Downs in the north, through the Vale of Pewsey and up onto Salisbury Plain. Recent work has shown that they most likely crossed the Avon at Marden, and were then dragged up the gentle slope which leads from the village onto the high plain, about the only feasible route when dragging multiple twenty-tonne rocks.

Many henges were dug on sites with already sacred or historical importance, perhaps as an act of enclosing and formalising that memory. Marden’s enclosing ditch is dated to 2570-2290BC, the same time or slightly after the sarsens were moved. Perhaps its creation was the final act of Stonehenge’s builders after their work was done.

The slope likely used to drag Stonehenge’s sarsens up onto Salisbury Plain

Marden was also the site of a large earthen mound, similar to the much more famous Silbury Hill near Avebury, but on a smaller scale. The mound, 70 metres in diameter and nine metres high, built sometime during or after the henge’s construction, was destroyed after antiquarians dug through it. Nothing now survives. Silbury Hill was built around 2400-2300BC; Marden may have been a similar date.

Both mounds were linked to encircling watercourses, and I feel the idea carries weight that they represent something akin to the mythical island of creation, rising from the primeval waters. It would certainly feel that way, as people watched the water silently creep through grass and tree roots around the mound as heavy rain swelled its course.

Why was it built at Marden? Was Marden linked to the birthpoint of Stonehenge? Perhaps the river was the boundary between two communities, the point where the stones were ceremonially handed over, and so this site was chosen for the great mound to be raised. Unfortunately, thanks to clumsy treasure seekers, we will probably never know.

Mayburgh Henge

Mayburgh Henge, near Penrith on the edge of the Lake District, is a stunning monument. It was built in the late Neolithic period and comprises a circular bank of stone, 50 metres wide at its base, 120 metres in diameter, and surviving to a height of 6 metres. It’s estimated to contain 20,000 tonnes of stone, probably carried up from the river Lowther, although it has also been suggested it was reshaped from a natural glacial deposit.

            Mayburgh Henge from the south

The henge is on a knoll of high ground which gives it a natural dominance over the surrounding area, and it would have been clearly visible from the surrounding fells before the grass began to cover it. It’s sited above the confluence of the rivers Eamont and Lowther, and above the ancient lowland routeway to the north and south, which forded the rivers at this point. Mayburgh was probably associated with the trade of stone axes, which were ground from Lake District greenstone and traded across Britain as far as East Anglia.

        The river Lowther, from which Mayburgh’s stones may have been carried.

The bank’s position and height make it impossible to see inside the henge, even from the distant fells, except for a tantalising view of its standing stones visible through the entrance from several hundred metres away down the hillside. This would have enhanced the mystery and power of the site for those who travelled by. It gives the impression of a powerful site and powerful people, a fitting guardian for the entrance into the hostile mountains where the stone quarries were found.

          The view from the entrance. The trees give an indication of size.

Four standing stones were raised in a square in the centre of the circle, of which one survives. Four more were present in the entrance, which faces due east. The stones were destroyed in the 18^th century, after which one of the workmen went insane and another committed suicide. Damaging once sacred monuments always seems to have a bitter price.

 The remaining standing stone, approximately 3 metres high.

Two other smaller henges were situated along the river Lowther, a few hundred metres away. King Arthur’s Round Table is 90 metres in diameter and comprises a circular ditch with an outer earthen bank. Two entrances lay to the south-east and north-west. The latter, which was flanked with two standing stones, has been destroyed, but would have aligned directly to the entrance of Mayburgh Henge, much further up the hillside. The second henge, the Little Round Table, was a similar size and has been entirely destroyed.

Both these henges lack the feeling of dominance and power of Mayburgh, and were perhaps used for more mundane work or trade, with only a select few being allowed up the hillside into the hidden inner sanctum of the greater henge, which still feels powerful after five thousand years.

             King Arthur’s Round Table

Avebury Monumental Complex

Avebury, a vast henge monument discussed last week, was developed into a far more elaborate complex during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. This is probably linked to the influx of a new people and culture from Europe who brought with them bronze-working technology and a vastly different way of life. It’s most likely the two cultures blended to form a new way of life and spiritual tradition. In this new world, individual wealth and power were becoming paramount.

Avebury’s two avenues, running from the south and west entrances, were built between 2600-2300BC; the early Bronze Age. There is no evidence for corresponding avenues for the other entrances.

The Beckhampton Avenue, now comprising only two stones, ran westwards along what is now Avebury High Street then curved southwest to the Longstones Enclosure, a causewayed enclosure created 600-800 years before the avenue itself. The enclosure had been long destroyed but its significance had remained in folk memory. Two long barrows, much earlier still, were also found nearby. Clearly the avenue’s builders were careful to include these ancient features built by their earliest ancestors.

The West Kennet Avenue runs southwards from Avebury to the Sanctuary, a stone and timber monument above the river Kennet. The serpentine route has been suggested to reflect the sinuous flow of a river, and it crosses the low-lying and once marshy ground around the Kennet before climbing the hillside to the Sanctuary. The Sanctuary is visible from almost all parts of the avenue, but Avebury itself is almost entirely hidden, suggesting the avenue may have been a processional path leading from Avebury to the Sanctuary rather than the other way around.

The West Kennet Avenue looking towards the Sanctuary.

Some of the stones had pottery, flint-working debris, human bones and sometimes entire burials at their base. People used the stones to mark graves, or to safeguard memories of lives or key events. Did individual families or settlements bring a stone from a place meaningful to them and raise it in the avenue, then leave gifts or loved ones’ remains at its base? The monument as a whole would then form a unified meld between all families and communities, strengthening relationships in a world where increasingly every person was for themselves.

Around this time, an unusual amount of human bones was deposited in Avebury’s ditches. This may have been ancestral remains from the now-ancient long barrows, which were closed for good around this time. Perhaps Avebury was a last haven for the old culture. Or perhaps people were sealing the memories of their past into its confines, so the land itself would remember them.

A nearby sarsen field. Stones with particular significance were taken to Avebury and incorporated into the monument.

Avebury now seems to be about memory and story. The avenues link several ancient features, including an ancient feasting site incorporated through a bend in the West Kennet Avenue, to tell a narrative history. I imagine people came to Avebury and processed from stone to stone in a communal remembrance of people and events, a commemoration of the histories of the places they passed, and their myths and legends of their existence.

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.

Devil’s Quoits Stone Circle

The Devil’s Quoits, a stone circle near Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire, was one of the bigger stone circles in Britain. Little of its original structure survived Medieval destruction and the construction of a Second World War airfield, and what is seen today is a near-entire reconstruction.

The 80-metre wide, slightly flattened circle today comprises 28 stones, originally 36, with an outlier outside the circle to the south-southeast. Folklore states that the devil was playing quoits one Sunday on nearby Wytham Hill, the only prominent landmark in the area, and these stones are the result. They are local stone with a lot of gravel inclusions, of irregular shape, up to 2m in height. Most of those present today are replacements.

The stones are set inside a henge ditch with an outer bank, which probably predate the stone circle. The ditch was originally 7m wide and 2.5m deep, with two entrances to the west and east. As was standard practice, antler picks, presumably those used to dig the ditch, were laid in the bottom after work was finished. The ditch was dug around 2900BC or slightly later, with deposits of cattle bones and pottery continuing for the next thousand years.

The circle with the outlier. The bank is in the background.

The Devil’s Quoits is located on the entirely flat floodplain of the river Thames, which today is three kilometres to the south but in Neolithic times was probably a multitude of braided streams winding through a marshy landscape, flooded in winter and reasonably dry with a few flowing channels in summer. The confluence with the river Windrush is nearby.

Several great ritual complexes were sited along the Thames during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, almost all of them on confluence points. The Thames and its tributaries were of vital importance for travel and navigation when the land was still largely impenetrable forest with few roads or paths, and the river was also used for rituals, offerings and burial.

The confluence of the Thames and the Windrush.

The local landscape bears no resemblance to former times. Gravel extraction pits have left huge lakes, and mounds and banks have destroyed any natural features. In the original landscape, the huge site would have been a landmark for miles around and a focal point for journeys, gatherings and trade. It was a focus for Bronze Age burials long after its construction. Those which were excavated before their destruction revealed the graves of men, women and children, often with elaborate grave goods such as daggers and pottery vessels.

The western causeway.

The site was abandoned by the Iron Age and was extensively ploughed during the Roman period, although it remained a feature of local folklore, and the village name derives from ‘stone-town’. Gravel extraction during the past half-century has destroyed around sixty Bronze Age barrows, ring ditches which often surrounded burials, and other graves containing an unknown number of human bodies, which are now incorporated in roadworks and construction sites across the country. It’s perhaps a blessing that a small part of the site survives.