By the Rev. Bryan King, M.A. 



381 



which has even aided Mr. Withers in his present work of restoring 

 the building to its original character. 



My readers will now be able to appreciate the relative accuracy of 

 Aubrey and Stukeley in respect of their descriptions of Avebury. 



And now I come to the important question — the existence of the 

 Beckham pton avenue. 



First then in the Kennet avenue we have remaining not only 

 fourteen 1 stones in situ about mid- way between Avebury and Kennet, 

 but we also have two stones on the Avebury side of those fourteen, 

 and two on the Kennet side, all of an unusual size, and therefore offer- 

 ing more than ordinary difficulty in their destruction ; and in addition 

 to all these, we have four others in the hedge-bank on the south side 

 of the road leading from Kennet to Marlborough. How is it 

 then that we have only two large stones remaining in their original 

 position of the presumed Beckhampton avenue ? 



To this question there is an obvious answer. 



Between Avebury and Kennet there is not a single cottage nor 

 stone wall, for the erection of which the stones of the avenue were 

 needed ; and so happily after all the smaller stones of the avenue, 

 in the neighbourhood of Avebury and Kennet respectively, were 

 used for building purposes, those fourteen — just midway between 

 the two villages, and therefore the last required for such purposes — 

 were left undisturbed; whilst the four in the hedge-bank were 

 probably spared on the ground of their serving as a boundary-mark 

 between the road and the adjacent field. 



And now compare this condition of the Kennet avenue with that 

 of the presumed line of the Beckhampton one. 



Beginning then with the walls of the churchyard, and of the 

 Church, and of the manor-house, with its enclosures, in an entire 

 length of full half-a-mile from the earthwork on the west side of 

 Avebury to the corner of the large field in which the two large 

 stones near Beckhampton now stand, there are very few lineal yards 

 which are not occupied by causeway, walls or cottages, all formed 



1 Three of these stones are from a foot to eighteen inches below the surface. 



