Sky and Landscape

Modified article in process – new data coming soon.

Continue reading “Avebury”

Part Two: Redefining the Stonehenge Landscape

Durrington Walls Pit Ring is by far the largest known example of a megalithic egg, when compared with other existing types of ‘egg’, such as Woodhenge (Type II, Thom, 1967), just south of Durrington;  Allen Water, near Hawick,(Type I, Thom, 1967 ); and Castell Mawr henge in Pembrokeshire (Type III, Heath, 1916), adjacent to the ‘bluestone’ outcrops of Preseli, in West Wales. Other surviving examples of ‘Type III’ eggs, which have semi-elliptical ‘blunt’ ends, include Hirnant cairn circle in Montgomeryshire (Type III Hoyle, 1977), and Glasserton Mains rock art, on the Machan peninsula, Dumfries and Galloway (Morris and Bailey, 1967).

In Part One, the map of the pits around Durrington Walls was shown to clearly define the known geometry of a circular ended Type II egg, based on the locations of the many pits that make up the ‘pit ring’ discovery at Durrington. This geometry was compared with that of Castell Mawr.

Part Two shifts the focus to a metrological analysis of the shape of this pit ring, exploring its apparent properties and the relationship between Stonehenge and Durrington Walls pit ring ,  whose centre is located at a distance of just under 2 miles to the north-east of Stonehenge.

A New Circle around Stonehenge.

Stonehenge displays some similar qualities to the pit ring in that both monuments have identifiable centres and both have connections with megalithic constructions beyond their enclosing ‘walls’or ditch and bank, which extend out into the wider landscape. My earlier posts on Woodhenge provide a good example of such an extension to Stonehenge. Both monuments are also redolent with geometrical and metrological information, the kind of evidence that I routinely work with.

The investigation here identifies and quantifies these similarities, and  concludes by identifying a possible further large circle, concentric to, but set well beyond the present boundaries of Stonehenge’s bluestone, sarsen and Aubrey circles, and analysis will suggest a highly significant underlying purpose for such a circle’s existence. 

Continue reading “Durrington Walls Pit Ring – Part Two”

An earlier shortened version of this article can be found on The Henge Shop website

StoneAgeSurveys

presents

For the Spring Brexinox, 2019

A Newly Revealed Temple at Avebury

The Avebury henge site was very nearly lost to us. We owe its existence to Alexander Keiller, the ‘Marmalade Millionaire’ who, during the 1930s, poured his family inheritance into restoring the site. Before Keiller, there were only eight original stones left standing at Avebury.

Avebury henge in the snow. The Henge Shop is at the centre, the Church just to its left.

During the early eighteenth century, the inhabitants of Avebury village became engaged in the wholesale toppling of Avebury’s huge stones and their subsequent reduction to building stone. If that great antiquarian and chronicler William Stukely had not publicly intervened, all of Avebury’s stones would have been removed and the site totally destroyed. A single generation would have demolished Avebury.

During Avebury’s darkest days, Stukely wrote,

‘And this stupendous fabric, which for some thousands of years, had brav’d the continual assaults of weather, and by the nature of it, when left to itself, like the pyramids of Egypt, would have lasted as long as the globe, hath fallen a sacrifice to the wretched ignorance and avarice of a little village unluckily plac’d within it.’  Continue reading “A NEW LANDSCAPE TEMPLE AT AVEBURY”