195 
Drayton makes no allusion to Abury or Silbury in his 
Poly-olbion, and Camden does not seem to have been aware of 
_ their existence; but Dr Philemon Holland, the first translator 
of Camden’s Britannia, in 1637, says :—‘* Within one mile of 
Silbury is Abury, an uplandish village, built in an old camp, as 
it seemeth, but of no large compass. It is environed with a 
fair trench, and hath four gates, in two of which stand huge 
stones as jambs, but so rude that they seem rather natural 
than artificial, of which there are some others in the said 
village.”’* . 
In January, 1648-9, John Aubrey, the celebrated Wiltshire 
Antiquary, happened to be staying at Marlborough with Mr 
Charles Seymour, and to be hunting with him in the country 
of the Grey Wethers. In 1663, King Charles II., who had 
heard John Aubrey’s account of Abury, and his statement that 
. “it doth as much exceed Stonehenge as a Cathedral does a 
f _ Church,” paid a visit to the place on his way to Bath, and 
commanded Aubrey to write a description of it. 
Aubrey made some rough sketches of what he saw. These 
_ sketches are reproduced in Mr Long’s exhaustive paper on 
Abury in the 4th volume of the Wiltshire Archeological and 
Natural History Magazine. [See Plate I.] It will be seen 
that he gives thirty-one stones of the outer circle, and forty- 
one of the two inner groups or concentric circles. The three 
menhirs, forming what Dr Stukeley calls the Cove of the 
Northern group, and the single one, which he calls the Obelisk 
_ or Ambre of the Southern group, were then standing. Aubrey 
also gives an account of the stone circle on Overton Hill, and 
_ of the avenue, or “Solemne Walk,” which connected it with 
¥ Abury. He suggests that Abury was a corruption of Oldbury— 
_ the old borough; and expresses his belief that this antiquity 
_ was an Arch Temple of the Druids.+ 
* Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Magazine, Vol. IV., p. 310. 
t+ The Topographical Collections of John Aubrey: Edited by Rev. J. E. 
_ Jackson, for the Wiltshire Archzological and Natural History Society, 1862, 
pp. 314-330. 
