on the Marlborough Downs. 



47 



early builders must have possessed to drag them from the Overton 

 Downs, and place them in the exact position they were meant to 

 occupjr j It is still a puzzle to archseologists to account for the 

 manner in which these stones were moved, but I think they prove 

 that those who handled them had far more mechanical knowledge 

 and skill than we, perhaps in our superiority of civilization, are 

 generally inclined to allow them. 1 



(1) As regards Temples. It is enough for me to mention Abury, 

 the largest and noblest temple of the early Britons to be found in 

 this island. But I do not think that by the general public Abury 

 is half so much appreciated as it deserves : its extent is so great ; 

 the stones that remain are scattered over so large a space, and the 

 whole arrangement is so difficult to realize, encumbered as the sacred 

 precincts are with the houses of the modern village, as well as walls 

 and hedge-rows which intersect it, that the magnificence of the 

 original work is overlooked. To arrive at a correct estimate of Abury 

 it is absolutely necessary to come to statistics, and I must ask your 

 indulgence, while I try to exhibit, by means of a few figures, the 

 vast dimensions of this mighty work. Consider, in the first place, 

 its vast area, 28 acres or 1400 feet in diameter; enclosed within a 

 circular fosse or ditch, which in depth is 33 feet below the level of 

 the meadows in the interior, and 9 feet wide at the bottom : and 

 this fosse Hanked on the outside by a vallum or rampart, which rises 

 34 feet above the surrounding field, so that the whole slope of the 

 vallum on the inside is upwards of 70 feet : and about half-way 

 between the top of the mound and the bottom of the fosse is a flat 

 ledge, 1£ feet wide, supposed to have been for spectators at the 

 public festivals. 



Then consider the sacred area thus protected by so gigantic a 

 fosse and rampart, surrounded immediately within the fosse by an 

 outer circle of one hundred massive stones, and containing within 

 this enclosure two circular temples, each of which was composed of 

 an outer circle of thirty stones, and an inner circle of twelve stones ; 



1 See my paper " On the Method of Moving Colossal Stones, as practised by 

 some of the More Advanced Nations of Antiquity," read before the Society at 

 Salisbury, September, 1865. Magazine, vol. x., pp. 52 — 60. 



