Avebury: The Cathedral

Avebury: The Cathedral
9 July 2002

Location	Avebury, Wiltshire The main reason I wanted to go to Wiltshire was to see Avebury. This page only shows the village and surroundings. West Kennet Long Barrow and West Kennet Avenue are on a separate page. The title comes from something John Aubrey, the famous seventeenth century antiquarian said. When comparing Avebury to Stonehenge he said that Avebury exceeded Stonehenge in greatness the way a cathedral does a parish church.

Weather	Drizzle intensified to rain but clearing up towards evening.

Click on the images to see larger versions.


	A crow. I met it in the car park at Avebury. This is the beauty of a powerful, optical zoom.

When you start on the path around the stone circle in Avebury, this is what you see: stones in orderly procession, a leaden sky and lots of sheep.

	In the south-west quadrant, I took pictures of many individual stones. This is a rather squat one.

This one stands on one corner. The stones of Avebury weren't shaped in any way and the order they stand in appears random.

	Through the centuries, vandals and Christian fanatics have tried to break or topple stones. This stone looks like it's missing a part at the bottom. Of the original 98 stones, only 27 remain.

Outside the stone circle there is a deep ditch and beyond that is a bank of chalk rubble. The ditch and bank are still impressive today although they used to be much grander. The ditch was originally up to 10 meter deep and the bank up to 17 meter tall. That's quite impressive for people who used antlers and bones for their construction work.

	The sheep here had cute little horns and weren't as afraid of people as sheep usually are. That's a good thing considering how many tourists come to Avebury every year.

The double stones mark the entrance to the circle from the West Kennet Long Barrow.

	Here is the outer pair. The stones you see in the distance are on the other side of the B4003.

The left stone of the previous pair. I like the way it looks as if it's folded like wet paper.

	This stone in the south-east quadrant looks a lot like the "bauta stones" Obelix used to carry around. I can vividly imagine him helping the locals moving stones from the Marlborough Downs sarsen fields to Avebury. Historically speaking however the timing doesn't fit. Avebury was built in Neolithic times, between 3710 BCE and 2000 BCE. The Romans didn't invade England until more than 2000 years later.

Here is the entrance to the West Kennet Avenue leading to West Kennet Long Barrow again. Or rather the exit from the ring.

	The stone on the left.

The stone on the right.

	Looking in towards the village and the Red Lion pub.

The drizzle intensified to rain. I thought it might not last all that long so I sheltered under a stone for a while, looking through this gap in the bank surrounding the circle.

	This lovely ash tree stands in the middle of the north eastern quadrant. With so much space around it, it's turned into a real beauty. There are a lot of ash trees in Wiltshire. More than in other English counties I've visited.

The insistent rain forced me inside, into the tea room. After my late lunch, this was the first picture I took. It's in the north west quadrant.

	Here's a look along the row of stones in the north west quadrant.

A single stone.

	This is the Devils chair. It is a historically inaccurate name as the circle was built long before the rise of monotheistic religions.

Here's the Devil's chair again, this time from the inside. The concrete marker is one of many, showing where stones used to stand.

	A neat row of stones in the southwest quadrant. The building on the right houses a cafe. It serves typical National Trust fare.

I stopped on the A4361 on my way to the West Kennet Long Barrow and took this picture of Silbury Hill. The hill itself is disappointing because you're not allowed to walk up on it.