7 Sep 2014. <GB-ENG> Westbury, & Avebury, Wilts —
Today was a travel and visit ancient (and not-so-ancient) monuments day. It wasn't far to
Bratton and the
White Horse. The road up to the site is a little hair-raising — up a hill, on a very narrow lane — but Susie took it in her stride.
When we got there, we found a very well-patronised local recreation area, with paragliders launching themselves off the hill into the very consistent updraught, and dog-walkers exercising their pooches. The white horse itself has had a chequered career — for a start when was it made? In Wiltshire and Dorset, there is a tradition of cutting white horses into the chalk hills to commemorate victories of the Saxons against the Danes. Well, there was supposedly such a battle here at the
Bratton Camp hill fort (which is still in evidence above the horse) in 878AD. But the white horse itself was cut in the 1600s. Moreover, it was recut in 1778 to a more modern design, which is the shape we see today. And, about 60 years ago, in a mistaken attempt to preserve the site, it was concreted in — so what we see today is a concrete shape plastered over an original chalk cutting that was a reworking in 1778 of a 200-year-old chalk cutting commemorating a battle (the
Battle of Ethandun) that may or may not have ever taken place. Such is history! Nevertheless, it's an interesting site, and we had a pleasant hour or so wandering about it, followed up with a soft-serve ice-cream from a van that had just arrived in the carpark.
We then set off for
Avebury. Now this really is an ancient site, in parts pre-dating Stonehenge. There are numerous places to visit — Overton Hill (with a number of neolithic burial mounds), West Kennet (with a
long barrow, a sanctuary area, and some palisaded enclosures),
Silbury Hill (an ancient man-made hill), Avebury (a henge, and multiple stone circles), avenues of stones between some of these sites, and a museum commemorating Alexander Keiller, who singlehandedly did a huge amount to conserve the site and which contains many of the more recent archaeological discoveries from all these sites. Obviously a fairly full day's exploration. We started off with a guided tour of the Avebury henge and stone circles. What we see today is but a poor remnant of what the site was like in about 2600BC. The size of the whole thing is mind-blowing —
the henge (ditch) around the area containing the stone circles is now 20m across and 3-4m deep, enclosing around 11 hectares (28 acres). When first dug, the ditch was 9m deep and the bank outside it was 4m high! — and because it was dug into chalk, it would all have been gleaming white!
As to the size of the whole thing — one of the larger standing stones is a massive 100 tons! (But compare this with the Brownshill Portal Tomb, dating from between 4000 and 3000 BC, that we found in Ireland on June 22 — the capstone of which was 150 tonnes!) But Avebury is just simply huge! Walking from one part of the overall site to another takes you 2-3 miles! After going round the henge and stone circles, we went off towards
Silbury Hill and the
West Kennet long barrow (which are within a mile of each other).
We parked right beside
Silbury Hill and walked around it — the site itself has no access, to protect it from the wear and tear of innumerable tourists, but just to look at it from the boundaries gives you a greater respect for our neolithic ancestors. Using only hand tools (mainly made of antlers and animal horn), they raised the largest prehistoric mound in Europe, around 37m high, 30m across its top, and 500m around its base.
Then we walked across to
West Kennet long barrow, about a mile away, at the top of a hill. Another fascinating site. After having seen various passage tombs in Ireland (notably Newgrange), we realised that this was a similar phenomenon, but on a smaller scale. There is a 5-chamber tomb in the eastern end of a 100m mound, dating to between 3,300BC and 2,500BC. We had a fine time exploring this site, and then drove about a mile to find the site of the Sanctuary (2500-2000BC), nothing of which can be seen today except for markers placed to show where wood and stone pillars used to be) and Overton Hill, the site of at least five burial mounds. After this, we decided to move on and find a place to overnight, on the way towards Salisbury and found a parking place off the A338, near a roadside cafe (catering mainly to motorcyclists!) near
Burbage, about 6 miles south of Marlborough.
Overton Hill
Distance driven — today, 71 miles ( 114 km ); to date, 7,240 miles ( 11,652 km )
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