Silbury Hill

The West Kennet Long Barrow, also known as South Long Barrow, is a chambered long barrow near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Probably constructed in the thirty-seventh century BC, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives in a partially reconstructed state. Archaeologists have established that the monument was built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Although representing part of an architectural tradition of long barrow building that was widespread across Neolithic Europe, the West Kennet Long Barrow belongs to a localised regional variant of barrows in Western Britain, now known as the Cotswold-Severn Group. Of these, it is part of a cluster of around thirty centred on Avebury in the uplands of northern Wiltshire. Built out of earth, local sarsen megaliths, and oolitic limestone imported from the Cotswolds, the long barrow consisted of a sub-rectangular earthen tumulus enclosed by kerb-stones. Its precise date of construction is not known. Human bones were placed within the chamber, probably between 3670 and 3635 BC, representing a mixture of men, women, children and adults. There is then an apparent hiatus in the use of the site as a place of burial, probably lasting over a century. Between 3620 and 3240 BC it likely began to be re-used as a burial space, receiving both human and animal remains over a period of several centuries. Various flint tools and ceramic sherds were also placed within it during this time. In the Late Neolithic, the entrance to the long barrow was blocked up with the addition of large sarsen boulders. During the Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, the landscape around West Kennet Long Barrow was subject to the widespread construction of ceremonial monuments, among them the Avebury henge and stone circles, the West Kennet Avenue, The Sanctuary, and Silbury Hill. During the Romano-British period, a small coin hoard was buried in the side of the long barrow. The ruin attracted the interest of antiquarians in the 17th century, while archaeological excavation took place in 1859 and again in 1955–56, after which it underwent reconstruction. Now a scheduled monument under the guardianship of English Heritage, it is classified as part of the "Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites" UNESCO World Heritage Site and is open without charge to visitors all year round.

Kennet Avenue or West Kennet Avenue is a prehistoric site in the English county of Wiltshire. It was an avenue of two parallel lines of stones 25m wide and 2.5 km in length, which ran between the Neolithic sites of Avebury and The Sanctuary. Excavations by Stuart Piggott and Alexander Keiller in the 1930s indicated that around 100 pairs of standing stones had lined the avenue, dated to around 2200 BC from finds of Beaker burials beneath some of them. Many stones have fallen or are missing, however. A second avenue, called Beckhampton Avenue, led west from Avebury towards Beckhampton Long Barrow. Maud Cunnington righted some of the stones during her work there in the early 20th century. Keiller restored the northern third of the avenue in 1934–1935.The avenue is within the Avebury section of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. It is in the freehold ownership of the National Trust, and a scheduled monument in English Heritage guardianship. It is managed by the National Trust on behalf of English Heritage, and the two organisations share the cost of managing and maintaining the property.

Avebury () is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England. The village is about 5.5 miles (9 km) west of Marlborough and 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Devizes. Much of the village is encircled by the prehistoric monument complex also known as Avebury. The parish also includes the small villages of Avebury Trusloe and Beckhampton, and the hamlet of West Kennett.

Avebury Priory was an alien house of Benedictine monks in Wiltshire, England, between the early 12th century and the Dissolution. William de Tancarville, chamberlain to Henry I, granted an Avebury estate (which he had recently received from the King) to the Abbey of Saint-Georges, Boscherville, Normandy in 1114, and a priory was established at Avebury soon afterwards. It was one of two such cells in England: William had also donated the church and manor at Edith Weston, Rutland, in or before the same year, leading to the establishment of Edith Weston Priory. At Avebury the monks did not have control of the parish church which was held by Cirencester Abbey, causing disputes over tithes in the next century.An inventory made in 1324 found around 600 sheep, two horses and two beds; the abbey typically had three or four monks in England, divided between Avebury and Edith Weston. Most foreign monks were expelled in 1378, and thereafter the land was tenanted by a succession of royal servants who undertook to provide a chaplain to conduct services. In 1411 the lands were granted to the collegiate church at Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire, which held them until the Dissolution in the 1530s.The names of priors are recorded sporadically between 1336 and 1377, and are listed in the Victoria County History.The house on the site of the monks' manor house is known as Avebury Manor and since 1991 has been owned by the National Trust. Parts of the Grade I listed house date from c.1557.

Avebury Manor & Garden is a National Trust property consisting of a Grade I listed early-16th-century manor house and its surrounding garden. It is in Avebury, near Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, in the centre of the village next to St James's Church and close to the Avebury neolithic henge monument.

Avebury () is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles, around the village of Avebury in Wiltshire, in southwest England. One of the best known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans. Constructed over several hundred years in the third millennium BC, during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony. The Avebury monument is a part of a larger prehistoric landscape containing several older monuments nearby, including West Kennet Long Barrow, Windmill Hill and Silbury Hill. By the Iron Age, the site had been effectively abandoned, with some evidence of human activity on the site during the Roman period. During the Early Middle Ages, a village first began to be built around the monument, eventually extending into it. In the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, local people destroyed many of the standing stones around the henge, both for religious and practical reasons. The antiquarians John Aubrey and William Stukeley took an interest in Avebury during the 17th century, and recorded much of the site before its destruction. Archaeological investigation followed in the 20th century, led primarily by Alexander Keiller, who oversaw a project which reconstructed much of the monument. Avebury is owned and managed by the National Trust. It has been designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument, as well as a World Heritage Site, in the latter capacity being seen as a part of the wider prehistoric landscape of Wiltshire known as Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites.

Falkner's Circle was a stone circle near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Built from twelve sarsen megaliths, it measured about 37 metres (121 ft) in diameter, although only one of these stones remains standing. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. Positioned in a dry valley, the circle was erected on the southern end of a field that contained a range of natural sarsens. It is possible that the megaliths were erected very close to where they were naturally found. The site had previously seen human activity in the Mesolithic period and may have been symbolically meaningful for local communities for a long time before the circle was created. The ring was located close to other Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monuments, such as the West Kennet Avenue and Avebury stone circle, although its precise relationship to these is unclear. Extensive flint knapping took place at the site during the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. Archaeological evidence indicates that in the Iron Age, a hearth was placed on the site, and in the post-medieval period a number of the stones were toppled and destroyed through burning. Most of the stones in the circle were lying prone on the ground by the seventeenth century, which might explain why it was left undiscovered by antiquarians exploring the area in that period, like John Aubrey and William Stukeley. The earliest known report of the site came from a Mr Falkner, who discovered it in 1840 while riding in the area. Due to the intensification of agriculture, all the prone stones were removed—thus destroying the circle—in either the late nineteenth or twentieth century. The site was excavated in 2002 in an archaeological project led by Mark Gillings and Joshua Pollard.

The Beckhampton Avenue was a curving prehistoric avenue of stones that ran broadly south west from Avebury towards The Longstones at Beckhampton in the English county of Wiltshire. It probably dates to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Only one stone, known as Adam, remains standing and even in William Stukeley's time (early 18th century) there was little evidence on the surface of the avenue. The other stones were probably broken up and sold by local landowners in the post-medieval era. Excavations by the University of Southampton in 2000, however, revealed the parallel rows of holes that held the stones. 120 m of the avenue was uncovered and indicated that the avenue consisted of a double row of stones placed at 15 m intervals in a similar pattern to those at Kennet Avenue. Stukeley's theory was that the two avenues were part of a giant 'snake' winding across the landscape with its head at The Sanctuary and also incorporating the Avebury monument. The avenue may have originally extended further past the Longstones, with Adam being part of the 'cove' or standing stone arrangement sited along its course. Eve is a known part of the avenue leading back to the western gateway of the henge, which included what is now the village high street. Before the avenue was built, the site was host to an earlier Neolithic causewayed enclosure.

The South Street barrow is a Neolithic long barrow in the English county of Wiltshire, near Beckhampton. It lies around 70 metres southeast of the cove of The Longstones and may therefore be connected with the Neolithic ritual landscape centred on Avebury. The mound was about 43 metres long and 17m wide, but cultivation has spread the material and reduced the mound's height.It was excavated between 1964 and 1966 by Paul Ashbee who found no evidence of burials beneath the barrow and conjectured that it was a kind of cenotaph. He found that it had been built around a number of wicker partitions using alternate layers of white chalk and darker earth. This material was probably excavated from flanking ditches surrounding the site, which survive as infilled features.

The Longstones are two standing stones, one of which is the remains of a prehistoric 'cove' of standing stones, at grid reference SU089693, close to Beckhampton in Avebury parish, in the English county of Wiltshire. Two stones are visible, known as 'Adam' and 'Eve' although the latter is more likely to have been a stone that formed part of the Beckhampton Avenue that connected with Avebury. The avenue probably terminated here, although it may have extended further to the south-west beyond the stones. William Stukeley recorded the site in the 18th century when it was only partially destroyed, and suggested it extended further, although modern excavation and archaeological geophysics have not confirmed this. Adam is the larger of the two stones, weighing an estimated 62 tons, and along with three others formed a four-sided cove. Excavations carried out jointly by the Universities of Leicester, Newport and Southampton in 2000 revealed the socket holes for the other stones which were tightly placed close to Adam. The cove had been open on its south-eastern side which faced towards the nearby South Street barrow, 130m away. The other stones were removed in the post-medieval period by a local landowner. Adam fell over in 1911 and was re-erected by Maud Cunnington in 1912. She also found a Beaker inhumation of a middle-aged man buried close by the stone, which is considered to postdate the megalith. In 1933 the stones were scheduled as an ancient monument.

Overton Hill is a 571 ft (174 m) hill at the southern edge of the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, England. It lies just west of the village of West Overton and about 4 miles (6 km) west from the town of Marlborough. The A4 road passes close to the north, and to the south is the River Kennet. The hill is notable for being the start point of the Ridgeway National Trail, which follows an ancient trackway. There several scheduled archaeological sites including several round barrows (burial mounds) on it, and the site of an Iron Age wooden circle known as The Sanctuary, indicating human activity for thousands of years. The hill is part of the Avebury section of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site.

The Sanctuary was a stone and timber circle near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Excavation has revealed the location of the 58 stone sockets and 62 post-holes. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders. The Sanctuary was erected on Overton Hill, overlooking older Early Neolithic sites like West Kennet Long Barrow and East Kennet Long Barrow. It was connected to the Late Neolithic henge and stone circle at Avebury via the West Kennet Avenue of stones. It also lies close to the route of the prehistoric Ridgeway and near several Bronze Age barrows. In the early 18th century, the site was recorded by the antiquarian William Stukeley although the stones were destroyed by local farmers in the 1720s. The Sanctuary underwent archaeological excavation by Maud and Ben Cunnington in 1930, after which the location of the prehistoric posts was marked out by concrete posts. Now a scheduled monument under the guardianship of English Heritage, it is classified as part of the "Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites" UNESCO World Heritage Site and is open without charge to visitors all year round.