Avebury Stone Circles and Long Barrow West Kennet

On Easter Monday we returned to Avebury stone circles, which we’d discovered just after Christmas.  But it takes a while for us to drive there, and it felt like we’d only just skimmed its surface before. 
 Soon after we’d seen Neil Oliver’s The SacredWonders of Britain, which featured a beautifully-shot episode on Avebury, and that convinced us that the stones were just part of the story there.  So back it was. Last time we’d been struck by the fact that the landscape was one that you had to get inside to understand, that lines of sight were slippery and held secrets.  And going back to read more about it, I discovered that this was in part the point:

            “the Neolithic monuments cannot be understood completely from maps but only when we experience the relationship between the natural topography and man-made earthworks.  By ‘being there’ and moving from place to place we become part of an intriguing interplay of visibility and concealment which sheds light on Neolithic attitudes to sacred places and rituals.” (Trubshaw, 2005: 143-4)

What I learnt was that the Avebury landscape is a network of places, a geographical story, and that parts can glimpsed from other parts, but none of them put together from a single perspective.  It’s difficult to give a sense really of how a whole panorama can be invisible except from a specific point, and again, and again, and again.  It’s not something I’d come across in this dramatic way before.  A kind of alternative Easter trail …

So, we started off near Silbury Hill which was cocooned in the oilseed yellow so bright it practically hurts your eyes.  From where we parked it looked like this was the only sight to see, but we followed the footpath south away from it over a hill towards the burial chamber- West Kennet Long Barrow.  It is quite staggering this climb as you go up and up - no sign of anything unusual - and then all of a sudden it’s there, right on the top of the hill, like some kind of optical illusion. Like no cemetery you've been to before.  The part you can go inside corresponds to a woman’s body, so you enter the womb between the legs, and small chambers form the head, arms and legs.  This felt fitting as Katie is going through a phase of referring to all things and people as ‘she’, which I like to pretend is her fledgling feminist consciousness.  It felt kind of surprising that the tomb hadn’t yet been closed off to the public, and people had left wild flowers scattered about and a candle was burning, and it felt fittingly respectful and free.   Serene, but dramatic.  On top of the Long Barrow the view was spectacular back towards Silbury Hill.

We knew the Avenue was the done way to proceed to Avebury on foot – a path guided at its sides by huge stones – but as we couldn’t actually see the start of it and have form for getting lost, we decided not to risk the 3yo’s relatively good humour and drove over to the village.  After about half a mile we came to the Avenue, which was nearer the road than I’d expected, and leads directly to the stone circles.

Today, being much warmer and drier the children spent ages climbing up and down the embankments around the stone circles.  It was a very different experience to before when it had felt more intense, having never been to anything like this before.  Now it was spring, more inviting, and we were no longer strangers.  Lambs meandered around the stones, as did the humans, although there is so much space here you’re hardly even aware of anyone else coming into your orbit.  New age drummers provided hypnotic sounds and smells; at another part of the stones a be-flowered ritual was taking place.  None of which raised a question from the children.

But then it seemed we’d had our quota of peaceful times and a stressy half hour ensued in which Katie managed to trash my phone, have an the kind of accident which can only be salvaged by going commando, and – most disastrously of all – the local National Trust property had run out of Easter eggs!  Luckily, my children thought on about how they weren’t actually that keen on Easter eggs, more so on the competitive element of any given situation, and the situation was salvaged with some chocolate fingers.  So we did a whistle-stop tour of Avebury Manor’s elegant gardens, which provided a stark contrast to the ruggedness – a different sort of man-made – of the stones beyond it.  And everyone was totally knackered for going back to school the next day.  Result.

What places have you discovered recently that you think you’ll keep going back to?

White horse on the drive back.

Trubshaw, B. (2005) Sacred Places: Prehistory and popular imagination, Heart of Albion: Avebury.