248 
DILUVIAL BOWLDERS, USED AT STONEHENGE. 
round Oxford amd Henley; which latter I shall immediately proceed 
to show were drifted thither from the central parts of England, be¬ 
fore the excavation of the present valley of the Thames*. 
* In the interior of Dorset, and in the counties of Wilts and Berks, the surface of 
the chalk is intersected in the same manner as that part of the coast we have been 
examining, by deep combs and valleys of denudation. It is also, occasionally, strewed 
over with enormous blocks of siliceous sandstone, the wreck of strata, whose softer ma¬ 
terials have been entirely washed away. These blocks have been long noticed by the 
name of Sarsden Stones, and Grey Wethers, on the downs of Wilts and Berks; and 
are particularly abundant near Marlborough, at Kennet on the west, and in Savernake 
Forest on the S. E. of that town : near the former place they cover a valley almost a 
mile in length, as thickly as sheep grazing in a flock, (hence their name of Grey 
Wethers), and some of the largest of them have been employed in the Druidical temple 
of Abury, at the head of this valley; whilst Savernake Forest has probably supplied 
the gigantic masses used to form the pillars of the larger circles at Stonehenge. 
The valleys called Clatford Bottom, Fifefield Bottom, and Lockridge Dame, near the 
villages of Kennet and Overton, are also strewed abundantly with blocks of the same 
kind; hut they are rapidly diminishing, from the custom which has of late been exten¬ 
sively practised, of splitting them with a heavy hammer after being gently heated. This 
practice has been even extended to some of the masses that once formed part of the 
temple at Abury, and if it he not stopped, will soon entirely demolish this most venerable 
monument of Druidical antiquity. That such barbarous sacrilege should have been 
tolerated by the proprietor of these precious relics, in an age like the present, is a matter 
that must excite the indignation and regret not only of the antiquary, but of every man 
who feels the slightest regard for the history of his country. . Similar blocks of sand¬ 
stone are also found scattered in great abundance over the chalk valleys at Ashdown 
Park, on the S. W. of Wantage. Their present position can only he referred to the 
same diluvial action which removed the softer portions of the sandy strata of which these 
blocks originally formed a part, and which excavated the valleys, over whose bottom, as 
well as on the sides and summits of the adjacent hills, they are now dispersed. The 
smaller pillars at Stonehenge are blocks of green-stone which can have been brought 
from no nearer spot than Devon, Wales, or Cumberland, or possibly Charnwood forest; 
but as there is a tradition that they have come from Ireland, from the county of Kildare, 
in which a rock of this kind actually occurs, the tradition may be founded on fact. I 
have observed Druidical circles composed of a nearly similar green-stone in the county 
of Cavan, and in Cumberland. The altar at Stonehenge is a mass of fine grained sand¬ 
stone, very different from the larger pillars, and being apparently capable of resisting the 
fire ; it was most probably derived from some stratum that occurs in the coal formation 
of the central parts of England. 
