Attraction in Wiltshire

Avebury in Wiltshire contains the largest stone circle in the world, a Neolithic monument of such extraordinary scale that the village of Avebury itself sits within the outer boundary of the henge, its pub, church and houses enclosed within the massive earthwork banks and ditches of a prehistoric ceremonial complex that dwarfs the more famous Stonehenge to the south in sheer extent. The outer circle at Avebury originally comprised approximately one hundred sarsen stones, some weighing over forty tonnes, arranged within a roughly circular bank and ditch enclosure that stretches 420 metres across. The site dates from around 2600 to 2000 BC and represents one of the greatest achievements of Neolithic monument building in Europe. The approach to Avebury along the ancient West Kennet Avenue, a processional route of paired standing stones that once connected the henge to the Sanctuary monument nearly two kilometres to the southeast, provides the most atmospheric introduction to the site. Walking this avenue with the great stones standing at intervals on either side and the henge earthworks rising ahead gives the visitor a sense of the scale and intention of the original monument complex that no amount of aerial photography or reconstruction drawing can fully communicate. The avenue itself is only partially restored, with marker posts indicating where missing stones once stood, but enough remains to make the experience powerful. The surrounding landscape contains additional monuments of the same period and tradition that together constitute one of the most important Neolithic and Early Bronze Age ceremonial landscapes in the world. Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, stands just to the south of the henge and remains largely unexplained in terms of function despite extensive archaeological investigation. The West Kennet Long Barrow, a chambered tomb dating from around 3700 BC and one of the finest megalithic burial monuments in Britain, is a twenty-minute walk from the main site. The village of Avebury offers excellent facilities for visitors including the Alexander Keiller Museum, which presents the archaeology of the monument complex in depth, the National Trust-managed Avebury Manor and Garden, and the opportunity to explore the stone circle at close quarters in a way that is no longer possible at Stonehenge.

Silbury Hill near Avebury in Wiltshire is the largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, a conical chalk hill approximately 40 metres high and 167 metres in diameter at the base that was built in stages around 2400 BC with a quantity of material sufficient to fill a modern sports stadium. The hill stands enigmatically in the Kennet valley below the great prehistoric ceremonial landscape of Avebury and Windmill Hill, its massive bulk completely lacking any feature that has yet provided a definitive explanation of its purpose, making it one of the most tantalising and most discussed of all British prehistoric monuments. The sheer scale of Silbury Hill, which would have required millions of person-hours of labour to construct, implies a social organisation capable of sustaining an enormous communal building project over an extended period, and the commitment of resources implied by the construction provides evidence for the social complexity of Neolithic Britain that is difficult to account for in simple models of small-scale agricultural communities. The effort involved was not an accident or a casual act but a deliberate programme of construction whose purpose must have been of overwhelming importance to the people who built it. The hill has been investigated several times since the eighteenth century by tunnelling into the interior, most recently in the 1960s, but no burials, artefacts or other evidence of function have been found that explain its purpose. The absence of any discovered reason, combined with the certainty of its enormous cost in human effort, creates the particular fascination that surrounds Silbury Hill and distinguishes it from the more explicable monuments of its period. English Heritage manages the exterior of the hill and the surrounding area; the ancient road that passes the base of the hill provides excellent views of its profile against the Wiltshire sky.

Stonehenge in Wiltshire is the most famous prehistoric monument in the world, a circular arrangement of enormous standing stones on Salisbury Plain that has been a place of human activity, ceremonial significance and intellectual fascination for over five thousand years. The monument we see today is the culmination of a building process that extended over fifteen centuries, from the first earthwork enclosure of around 3000 BC through the erection of the bluestones transported from Wales and the great sarsen trilithons of approximately 2500 BC to the final rearrangements completed by about 1500 BC. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the centrepiece of a landscape of Neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial monuments of international significance. The engineering achievement of Stonehenge remains impressive even in an age of heavy machinery. The sarsen stones, the largest weighing approximately 25 tonnes, were transported from the Marlborough Downs approximately 25 kilometres to the north using human muscle, wooden sledges and possibly water transport for part of the journey. The bluestones of the inner circle, each weighing up to four tonnes, were transported from the Preseli Hills in Wales approximately 250 kilometres away, a feat of logistical organisation that implies a social complexity and a capacity for long-distance coordination that challenges many assumptions about Neolithic society. The purpose of Stonehenge continues to generate scholarly debate. The alignment of the monument on the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, the most consistent astronomical alignments built into the structure, suggests a ceremonial function related to the solar calendar, and the evidence for cremation burials in the monument over many centuries indicates its use as a funerary site. Whether it served primarily as a temple, an astronomical observatory, a place of healing or some combination of these and other functions remains unclear and perhaps permanently unknowable. The visitor centre opened in 2013 provides an excellent introduction to the monument and the surrounding landscape before the short walk or shuttle to the stones themselves.

West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury in Wiltshire is the finest Neolithic chambered long barrow in England, a burial monument approximately 100 metres long built around 3650 BC that was used for communal burial over several centuries before being sealed with massive sarsen boulders around 2500 BC. The barrow is freely accessible and the experience of entering the burial chambers cut into the chalk beneath the mound provides one of the most direct and most atmospheric encounters with the Neolithic world available in Britain. The burial chambers are arranged in two pairs off a central passage at the eastern end of the mound, each chamber constructed from massive upright sarsen stones with horizontal cap stones forming the roof. The chambers were used for the burial of many individuals over the centuries of use, the bones being rearranged and the space reused in a communal ancestral tradition quite different from individual burial. The remains of at least forty-six individuals were found during the excavation of the chambers in 1955 and 1956. The long barrow stands on the chalk ridge within sight of Silbury Hill and the Avebury monuments, part of the dense concentration of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments that make the Avebury landscape the most significant prehistoric monument complex in Britain. The walk between West Kennet, Silbury Hill and Avebury, traversing the chalk downland between these extraordinary monuments, provides one of the finest prehistoric landscape experiences available in England.

The White Horse of Uffington on the Berkshire Downs is the oldest and most celebrated chalk hill figure in Britain, a stylised horse figure approximately 110 metres long created by cutting through the turf to the white chalk beneath that dates from the late Bronze Age, approximately 3000 years ago, making it by far the oldest of the hill figures that dot the chalk downland of southern England. The figure is managed by the National Trust and is a Scheduled Ancient Monument of outstanding national importance. The horse is visible from a wide area of the Vale of the White Horse below and is best appreciated from a distance, its stylised, almost abstract form quite different from the more naturalistic figures created in later periods. The figure has been maintained in good condition by periodic scouring, a practice documented from the medieval period when the local population gathered to clean the figure in a ceremony that combined practical maintenance with festive celebration. The tradition of scouring is one of the most sustained examples of community maintenance of a prehistoric monument in Britain. The Bronze Age hillfort of Uffington Castle immediately above the horse, the flat-topped chalk mound of Dragon Hill below the scarp where St George is said to have slain the dragon and the Ridgeway ancient track traversing the ridge provide a concentration of prehistoric landscape features that make the Uffington area one of the most richly layered prehistoric sites in Oxfordshire. The view from the scarp edge above the horse encompasses the entire Vale of the White Horse below in one of the finest panoramas available from the Berkshire Downs.