516 Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 



. . The south-east avenue at Avebury was, I take it, the most 

 important feature of that elaborate temple . . . "What, then, might 

 have been the use of these avenues ? If they were erected to indicate 

 the rising place of a southern star the only important one they could 

 have dealt with was a Centauri, and that between B.C. 3000 and B.C. 4000. 

 I give approximate dates where the measures are sufficient to enable me 

 to do so. 



" The rise of a Centauri would be preceded shortly by that of /3, almost 

 in the same azinmth. 



At the time in question, 3500 B.C., they would serve as warners for 

 the November sunrise, which was long afterwards accepted as the begin- 

 ing of the year for the Celts . . . Mr. Goddard has raised objections 

 to my statements concerning the Avebury Avenues on the ground that 

 ill some of the old descriptions, given while many more stones were 

 standing, some are indicated placed in relation to the road passing 

 through the southern part of the bank, at it exists at present, and quite 

 out of the line of the Kennet Avenue indicated by the stones shown on 

 the Ordnance Map. If the stones once near the road were associated 

 with those shown on the Ordnance Map, there would have been no 

 avenue at all in the sense I have always used that word in these notes, 

 but a twisty road having no possible astronomical significance, and I 

 may add no resemblance to the Beckhampton Avenue, of which all the 

 recorded stones are in the same straight line as near as we can say : or 

 to any of the others in the table I have given above ... If the 

 conclusions I have expressed above be confirmed, namely that Avebury 

 was a going concern a thousand years before anything that now remains 

 of Stonehenge was set up in its present position, or the avenues laid out, 

 the use of the Kennet Avenue to watch the riseof a Centauri asa warner 

 of the November festival (while the sunrise in May was provided for in 

 the Beckhampton Avenue) ceased at least 4000 years ago. There has 

 been ample time, therefore, to build the bank, to leave openings for 

 wheeled traffic, and to set up stones in many places. Indeed the stones 

 may have been removed from the avenue when the bank was built. 

 That the bank came long after Avebury was first in use was, I take it, 

 well known to Stukeley. . . . Mr. Goddard does not seem to have 

 . read my previous notes carefully. I never imagined the Kennet Avenue 

 going ' over the bank and ditch ' but going to the southern circle before 

 the mound was built, as the Beckhampton went to the other, as a via 

 sacra, throughout the whole length of which the rising star could be 

 seen. Of course, the existence of the bank would have prevented any 

 star being seen from the circle along the southern horizon, and what 

 often happened in Egypt suggests that the bank was built because the 



