382 



Avelury. — Tlic Beckhampton Avenue. 



of sarsen stone, sufficient, and more than sufficient, to absorb all the 

 stones of the Beckhampton avenue. 



But now as to some of the positive evidence for the existence of 

 this avenue. 



Stukeley then speaks of ten stones of this avenue known to have 

 been standing within memory between the exit of the avenue from 

 the vallum and the brook (i.e., within a distance of about three 

 hundred yards of the earthwork) and further states that " Farmer 

 Griffin broke near twenty of the stones " of the part of the avenue 

 to the eastward of the cove; whilst Mr. Lucas, in 1795, who was 

 an occupant of the vicarage- house in which I now reside, states, in 

 some " general remarks 33 appended to a poem on Abury, that " the 

 Beckhampton avenue was also visible, though not so perfect as the 

 other, in the memory of the late Mr. John Clements (aged eighty- 

 five at the time of his death), who could clearly point it out. This 

 had been chiefly demolished by Farmer Griffin and Richard Fowler." 



In confirmation of this testimony to the existence of the Beck- 

 hampton avenue I will now give the results of my own observation. 



The late James Paradise, who died in the year 1871, at the age 

 of sixty-eight years, informed me that he remembered a large sarsen 

 stone, such as those within the earthwork, lying in the road nearly 

 opposite to his house and outside the northwest corner of the vicarage 

 premises, which was broken up on account of its being in the way 

 of the gateway leading into the meadow at the west of the vicarage 

 premises ; a fragment of this stone, nearly five feet long, is now 

 lying on the spot. 



On this line, leading westward from Avebury towards the large 

 Beckhampton stones, I myself found a sarsen stone six feet long, 

 now supporting the causeway, 1 a little on the eastern side of the 

 brook; and another, a little further westward, at the base of the 

 third pier of the bridge over the brook, five feet six inches long : 

 whilst again a little farther westward, lying on the surface of the 

 causeway, is another sarsen stone, upwards of seven feet long, and 



1 The late Joseph Robinson, a descendant of the notorious " Tom," assured me, 

 on his life-long experience as a mason, that all the stones of this causeway are 

 the broken fragments of larger stones. 



