A MISSING DRAWING AND AN OVERLOOKED TEXT: SILBURY HILL ARCHIVE FINDS 



91 



Fig. 3. Silbury Hill, from Sir Richard Colt Hoare's Ancient 

 Wiltshire (1821) 



Atkinson's team that may have indicated the 

 problem was not due to rabbits. The capping that 

 covered the hole has now disappeared from view, 

 possibly due to a migrating collapse above the 

 Archaeological Institute tunnel that had broken into 

 the 1776 shaft at the level Lukis recorded it being 

 in 1849. 



AN OVERLOOKED TEXT 



Henry Browne, who produced and sold guides and 

 archaeological models as the first 'official' custodian 

 of Stonehenge, relates a hitherto overlooked eye- 

 witness account of the 1776 dig in An Illustration 

 of Stonehenge and Abury, published in 1823: 



In reference to this hill, the work I apprehend of the 

 builder of the Serpent and Temple, I will now relate 

 an interesting fact, communicated to me by a 

 gentleman of Abury, a Mr Hickley, if I am right in 

 the recollection of his name. This elderly gentleman, 

 when a youth, was at Silbury Hill on the occasion of 

 some miners sinking a large hole or well down the 

 centre of it to the ground on which it began to be 

 raised. In doing this they found a piece of timber* 

 continued down the whole way, evidently for a centre 

 from whence to take the measurement of the hill in 

 working it upwards. 



* It is the property of almost all things buried in chalk 

 and retired from the operation of the air, to be very 

 little subject to decay. 



The validity of this eye-witness account as 

 reliable is suggested by the mention of neither 

 treasure nor skeletons. Dean Merewether recorded 

 in the Archaeological Institute report that when 

 interviewing two men in 1849, who claimed to have 



intimate knowledge of the 1776 dig, he doubted 

 their suggestion that 'a man' (skeleton) had been 

 found on the basis the men had reported 'what they 

 deem likely than the positive fact'. 



Unlike a skeleton, a central top to bottom timber 

 core is not something to be dreamed up as 'likely'. 

 A central timber top to bottom deposit was not 

 made clear by James Douglas in his Nenia 

 Britannica of 1 793, the only account published prior 

 to the interview with Henry Browne. Nor was it 

 further discussed until the Rev. Duke published The 

 Druidical Temples of Wiltshire in 1846, although 

 he interestingly 'had no doubt' that the slip of oak 

 reported found in 1777 'was the ultimate remains 



Fig. 4. 1933 Detail of aerial photograph by Major Allen 

 showing the 'hole' and adjacent spoil (Ashmolean 

 Museum) 



of an upright log, placed as a centre, around which 

 this aspiring mound was raised'. The testimony of 

 'Mr Hickley' also offers a new interpretation of the 

 reaction of the Duke of Northumberland's foreman, 

 Colonel Drax, to James Douglas demonstrating that 

 the only find of 1777 was a slip of timber and not 

 whalebone as had been thought (Douglas 1793, 

 161). 



Upon this demonstration Douglas records that 

 Drax 'had a fancy that this hill had been raised over 

 a Druid oak, and he thought the remains of it were 

 discovered in the excavation' (Douglas 1793, 161). 

 This could be interpreted as Drax construing the 

 timber found at the base of the shaft to be the 



