Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamiyhlets, Articles, &c. 515 



Avebury, Orientation of the Avenues. Sir Norman 



Lockyer, in Nature, Jan. 16tb, 1908, pp. 249—251, dealing with the 

 alignment of the Aveburj' Avenues, and their significance, says " I have 

 measured several avenues since ' Stonehenge' was published, and I have 

 studied others of which the. orientation could be deteimined by the 

 Ordnance Maps. Many of them have been found to have had the same 

 astronomical use which had been suggested in those measured on 

 Dartmoor." He then takes the course of the Beckhampton avenue as 

 according to Stukeley passing by the south side of the churchyard, and 

 finds that a line " joining the two large monoliths at the west end of the 

 Beckhampton avenue and the Cove (in the centre of the northern circle) 

 . . . passes close to the stones indicated by Stukeley." He then 

 gives Stukeley's desci'iption of this avenue : and continues " It will be seen 

 that the May Year Avenue line is directed nearlj-, but not quite, to the 

 centre of the northern circle, the Cove occupying the centre itself, so block- 

 ing the view from the avenue or processional road to the S.W." He then 

 deals with theKennetA venue, after quoting Stukeley's andLong's accounts 

 of it : " As will be seen from the map [a photo from the 25in. ordnance 

 survey], this avenue apparentlj' was connected with the southern circle 

 as the Beckhampton one was with the northern one. If this were so, 

 certainly the enormous bank, erected apparently for spectacular purposes, 

 which is such a striking feature of Avebury, was not made until after 

 the Kennet avenue had fallen out of any astronomical use . . . This 

 avenue seems to have struck another aligned from the circle on Overton 

 Hill, which formerly M'as oriented to the May sunset or the November 

 sunrise to judge from the positions of the stones given in Smith's map." 



In accordance with this statement Sir Norman Lockyer marks the 

 south-eastern or Kennet Avenue as making straight for the centre of the 

 southern circle across the existing hank and ditch well to the left of the 

 present road leading to Kennet. In this he ignores the fact that Stukeley 

 {Aburi/, Tab. I.) marks two prostrate stones of the avenue actually in 

 the existing gap by which the Kennet Road enters Avebury, as to which 

 it is noted that they were " broke 1722." 



Aubrey too, in his plan (Jackson's Aiihrey, p. 319) taken in 1663, 

 shows seven stones of the avenue as lining the sides of the existing road 

 immediately on its leaving the gap in the mound. Moreover there is 

 the large and conspicuous stone, one of those marked both by Aubrey 

 and Stukelej', standing still, close on the right-hand side of the Kennet 

 Eoad, which has apparently escaped Sir Norman Lockyer's notice. 



Continuing his " Notes on Ancient British Monuments " in Nature, 

 Feb. 20th, 1908, and dealing especially with stone avenues which he 

 believes to have been constructed to observe southern stars Sir Norman 

 Lockyer says " I next proceed to give a list of the avenues at present 

 known to me which are roughly parellel with those at Challacombe, and 

 where, possibly, southern stars were in question ; curiously enough, this 

 condition applies to the Kennet Avenue at Avebury and to those at 

 Borobridge and Shap . . . It is as well to point out that some of 

 the monuments included in the list are the most remarkable in Britain 



