Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 1907 V35 Pages 515-517
Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 1907 V35 Pages 515-517 is in Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 1907 V35.
Avebury, Orientation of the Avenues. Sir Norman Lockyer, in Nature, Jan. 16tb, 1908, pp. 249—251.
dealing with the alignment of the Avebury Avenues [West Kennet Avenue and Beckhampton Avenue], and their significance, says " I have measured several avenues since ' Stonehenge' was published, and I have studied others of which the. orientation could be deteimined by the Ordnance Maps. Many of them have been found to have had the same astronomical use which had been suggested in those measured on Dartmoor." He then takes the course of the Beckhampton avenue as according to Stukeley passing by the south side of the churchyard, and finds that a line " joining the two large monoliths at the west end of the Beckhampton avenue and the Cove (in the centre of the northern circle) . . passes close to the stones indicated by Stukeley." He then gives Stukeley's desci'iption of this avenue : and continues " It will be seen that the May Year Avenue line is directed nearlj-, but not quite, to the centre of the northern circle, the Cove occupying the centre itself, so block- ing the view from the avenue or processional road to the S.W." He then deals with theKennetA venue, after quoting Stukeley's andLong's accounts of it : " As will be seen from the map [a photo from the 25in. ordnance survey], this avenue apparentlj' was connected with the southern circle as the Beckhampton one was with the northern one. If this were so, certainly the enormous bank, erected apparently for spectacular purposes, which is such a striking feature of Avebury, was not made until after the Kennet avenue had fallen out of any astronomical use . . This avenue seems to have struck another aligned from the circle on Overton Hill, which formerly M'as oriented to the May sunset or the November sunrise to judge from the positions of the stones given in Smith's map."
In accordance with this statement Sir Norman Lockyer marks the south-eastern or Kennet Avenue as making straight for the centre of the southern circle across the existing hank and ditch well to the left of the present road leading to Kennet. In this he ignores the fact that Stukeley (Abury, Tab. I.) marks two prostrate stones of the avenue actually in the existing gap by which the Kennet Road enters Avebury, as to which it is noted that they were " broke 1722."
Aubrey too, in his plan (Jackson's Aubrey, p. 319) taken in 1663, shows seven stones of the avenue as lining the sides of the existing road immediately on its leaving the gap in the mound. Moreover there is the large and conspicuous stone, one of those marked both by Aubrey and Stukeley', standing still, close on the right-hand side of the Kennet Eoad, which has apparently escaped Sir Norman Lockyer's notice. Continuing his "Notes on Ancient British Monuments " in Nature, Feb. 20th, 1908, and dealing especially with stone avenues which he believes to have been constructed to observe southern stars Sir Norman Lockyer says "I next proceed to give a list of the avenues at present known to me which are roughly parellel with those at Challacombe, and where, possibly, southern stars were in question ; curiously enough, this condition applies to the Kennet Avenue at Avebury and to those at Borobridge and Shap . . It is as well to point out that some of the monuments included in the list are the most remarkable in Britain . The south-east avenue at Avebury was, I take it, the most important feature of that elaborate temple . . "What, then, might have been the use of these avenues ? If they were erected to indicate the rising place of a southern star the only important one they could have dealt with was a Centauri, and that between B.C. 3000 and B.C. 4000. I give approximate dates where the measures are sufficient to enable me to do so.
Challacombe 3600 BC.
Avebury 3400BC.
Borobridge [Map] 3400BC.
Shovel Down 2900BC.
Crug yr Avon 2700BC.
"The rise of a Centauri would be preceded shortly by that of β almost in the same azinmuth.
At the time in question, 3500 B.C., they would serve as warners for the November sunrise, which was long afterwards accepted as the begining of the year for the Celts . . Mr. Goddard has raised objections to my statements concerning the Avebury Avenues on the ground that ill some of the old descriptions, given while many more stones were standing, some are indicated placed in relation to the road passing through the southern part of the bank, at it exists at present, and quite out of the line of the Kennet Avenue indicated by the stones shown on the Ordnance Map. If the stones once near the road were associated with those shown on the Ordnance Map, there would have been no avenue at all in the sense I have always used that word in these notes, but a twisty road having no possible astronomical significance, and I may add no resemblance to the Beckhampton Avenue, of which all the recorded stones are in the same straight line as near as we can say : or to any of the others in the table I have given above ... If the conclusions I have expressed above be confirmed, namely that Avebury was a going concern a thousand years before anything that now remains of Stonehenge was set up in its present position, or the avenues laid out, the use of the Kennet Avenue to watch the riseof a Centauri asa warner of the November festival (while the sunrise in May was provided for in the Beckhampton Avenue) ceased at least 4000 years ago. There has been ample time, therefore, to build the bank, to leave openings for wheeled traffic, and to set up stones in many places. Indeed the stones may have been removed from the avenue when the bank was built. That the bank came long after Avebury was first in use was, I take it, well known to Stukeley .... Mr. Goddard does not seem to have read my previous notes carefully. I never imagined the Kennet Avenue going 'over the bank and ditch' but going to the southern circle before the mound was built, as the Beckhampton went to the other, as a via sacra, throughout the whole length of which the rising star could be seen. Of course, the existence of the bank would have prevented any star being seen from the circle along the southern horizon, and what often happened in Egypt suggests that the bank was built because the avenue had become useless. That the Kennet Avenue was once used as a via sacra to observe the rise of a Centauri as the morning star warner of the November sunrise is all the more probable since the avenue from the southern end of the Kennet Avenue to the 'Sanctuary' was an alignment to the November sunrise itself so far as can now be made out."
As to Sir Norman's theory there is just this to be said, of course these things may have happened. The Beckhampton Avenue may have been straight, but the evidence for the existence of that avenue at all rests absolutely on Stukeley's evidence, and he depicts it as waved and not straight, and except the "Longstone Cove [Map]" nothing whatever of it remains now. The Kennet avenue, on the other hand, without a shadow of a doubt entered the circle at Avebury in Stukeley's days, when enough stones remained to trace its entire course, through the existing gap by which the Kennet Road enters it to-day. On this point the plans of both Aubrey and Stukeley leave no room for doubt. Therefore the Kennet Avenue as Aubrey and Stukeley knew it certainly teas not straight and did not jjoint to the centre of the southern circle. There really is no possibility of arguing that it did. It may have done so 3500 B.C., as Sir Norman Lockyer believes, and the bank and ditch may be an afterthought, but it has to be frankly stated not only that Stukeley did not know this to be so, but that there is no grain of actual evidence that it was so.
Moreover, lo an observer within the circle at Avebury by far the greater part of the Kennet Avenue must always have been invisible — bank or no bank — owing to the intervening rise in the ground.