2-50 



NA 'JURE 



[January i6, k 



sensible tliat all the effect desired in the case was their 

 bulk and regular station. When I abode here for 

 some time on purpose, for several summers together, 



Photo, by Lady Locky.r. 

 Fig. 12.— One of ihe Monolilhs at Borobridge. 



I was very careful in tracing it out, kne^'- ine distinct 

 number of each stone remaining, an'', where every one 



stood that was wanting; which __ 



often surprised the country people, 

 who remembered them left on the 

 ground or standing, and told me 

 who carried them away. Many of 

 the farmers made deep holes and 

 buried them in the ground ; they 

 knew where they lay. Lord Win- 

 chelsea with me counted the number 

 of the stones left, 72, anno 1722. 

 I laid it all down in the nature of a 

 survey, on large imperial sheets of 



paper, and wrote a detail of every 



stone present or absent ; but it would 

 be very irksome to load the press 

 with it." Mr. Long, after describ- 

 ing the war of e.xtermination which 

 had been waged against them, and 

 how such stubborn blocks as re- 

 fused to succumb to fire and hammer 

 were buried in the pits dug for 

 them, continues : " Two of them He 

 six feet underground in the pre- 

 mises of Mr. Butler of Kennet, and 

 over another the Bath road passes. 

 The work of destruction has been 

 so successfully carried out that only 

 nineteen stones or their stumps are 

 now visible between West Kennet 

 and Abury ; four in the bank on the left-hand side of 

 the road from Marlborough as it enters Kennet, and 

 which can only be seen by going into the adjoining- 

 field : these stones lie about thirty paces apart, and 



NO. 1994, VOL. 'jy'\ 



that these were the original, or nearly the original, 

 distances, seems confirmed by Stukeley's twentieth 

 plate." ' 



As will be seen from the map, this avenue apparently 

 was connected with the southern circle as the Beck- 

 hampton one was with the northern one. If this 

 were so, certainly the enormous bank, erected appar- 

 ently for spectacular purposes, which is such a striking 

 feature of Avebury, was not made until after the Ken- 

 net Avenue had fallen out of any astronomical use. 



The alignment of this avenue, as measured on the 

 25-inch map, is S. 32° E., the elevation of the horizon 

 from the i-inch map being 49'. This gives a declin- 

 ation of 31° 34' S. I shall return to this point later on. 



This avenue seems to have struck another aligned 

 from the circle on Overton Hill, which formerly was 

 oriented to the May sunset or the November sunrise, 

 to judge from the positions of the stones given in 

 Smith's map. 



.At Borobridge, near Harrogate, is another avenue I 

 have visited; only three stones remain, two have dis- 

 appeared in recent times, the extreme stones being 

 separated by about 700 feet. They are not in a line. 

 Lukis was the first to suggest that they were the 

 remains of an avenue, and I agree with him. Accord- 

 ing to m}' measurements the breadth of the avenue was 

 about 25 feet. With a clino-compass the mean of three 

 readings gave N. 355° E. as the magnetic azimuth; 

 taking the variation as 17° (October 4, 1907), this gives 

 us S. 22° E. or N. 22° W. ; the true northern horizon 

 is ii° high, the southern one 1°. 



I give a copy of a photograph of the central stone ; 

 this seems to have been squared, and the east and west 

 sides are slightly slewed from the general line of 

 direction. 



Mr. Lewis,- in an interesting account of these stones, 

 tells us that the most northerly stone is iS feet high 

 by 74 by 32 feet, the second (the one illustrated), 1974 

 feet away, 22 feet high by 45 by 4J feet; and the 

 southerly one, 362 feet away, 23 feet high by 45 by 

 4 feet. They are called locally the Devil's .'\rrows. 



Of another Dartmoor avenue, that at .Assacombe, in 



the Chagford district, I am enabled, by the kindness 

 of Mr. Falcon, the author of " Dartmoor Illustrated " 



Wiltshire Magazine, vol.^. iv., pp. 327-9 ; 

 Journal Anthropological Insti/ttte, Novel 



