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Books, Prehistory, Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 1879 V18 Pages 377-383
Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 1879 V18 Pages 377-383 is in Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 1879 V18.
Avebury — The Beckhampton Avenue. By the Rev. Bryan King (age 66), M.A.
Canon Jackson, in his valuable notes to Aubrey’s "Wiltshire Collections," is led to contrast the plans and descriptions of Avebury and its avenues as given by Aubrey and Stukeley respectively.
He states that the ground-plans of Aubrey were drawn seventy years before those of Stukeley, and from this and other circumstances draws the inference of the greater authority of those of Aubrey.
This inference seriously affects the question of the existence at any period of an avenue of stones leading in the direction of Beckhampton corresponding to that which leads to Kennet.
Thus, Mr. Jackson writes (p. 325), "of a stone avenue leading from Abury to Beckhampton (which is the great point in dispute) Aubrey says not one word. He mentions the three gigantic blocks of stone called ‘The Devil’s Coits [Map],’ (now the Long Stones [Map]) which lay on that side of Abury and of which two are still left standing ; but no other, great or small, standing upright anywhere near them. If on that side of Abury there were any not upright, but lying about or half-buried in the ground, it is clear that they did not attract his eye as stones that had ever formed part of the general structure. Stukeley’s statement, on the other hand, is that coming out of the earthwork on the road towards Beckhampton he saw stones, some lying in the very road, some in the pastures; and that he was told of others that had been broken up in the fields all within a few years prior to 1722. Upon what certainly must be called very slender evidence, he created an avenue of two hundred stones running some way beyond Beckhampton and ending in a point upon the open downs .... The narrowing of the latter part of this supposed avenue, and its ending in a point, are admitted by Stukeley himself to be only a supposition .... The end of the Beckhampton avenue being fanciful, it is not impossible that the same fancy may also have been at work in constructing other parts of it."
Now, Mr. Jackson is led to attach greater weight to the testimony of Aubrey than to that of Stukeley on the grounds that he visited Avebury seventy years before Stukely did (p. 323, note), that he "visited it frequently" (Ib.), that he noticed of the earthwork that it was an ill-shaped monument " (p. 324), whilst Stukeley gives it as perfectly circular, which it is not, and that he depicts the Kennet avenue as "running straight" from Abury to Kennet (p. 324), whereas, according to Stukeley, "on coming out of Abury it curved a little."
Now, in presuming to traverse the above grounds of Mr. Jackson’s preference of the authority of Aubrey to that of Stukeley, I do so, not as venturing for a moment to place my own authority in competition with that which justly attaches to the venerable name of Canon Jackson, but solely on the ground that during a residence in Avebury of sixteen years, I have had unusual opportunities of observation on a subject on which I have taken a very deep interest.
I am led, then, to question whether Aubrey did make frequent visits to Avebury, and still more strongly to question his accuracy of observation when he did make his visits; and this on the following grounds:—
At the very outset of his remarks upon the subject he writes, "Abury is four miles west from Marlborough" (p. 319), whereas it is full six miles distant, and but little short of this "as the crow flies."
Then he writes (p. 323) "Southwards from Abury in the ploughed field near Kynet, doe stand three huge upright stones, perpendicularly, like the three1 stones [Map] (within the earthwork) at Abury ; they are called "The Devill’s Coytes." Now these stones instead of being southward of Avebury and near Kennet, are in fact westward from Avebury, and near Beckhampton!
And, lastly, in a note to his remarks upon the length of the Kennet avenue, he states (p. 370) "a shower of rain hindered me from measuring it."
Note 1. I presme these to be the three stones then forming the centre of the north circle or temple.
Now I submit that the inevitable inference to be drawn from these extracts is, that the visits of Aubrey to Avebury were of a very casual and cursory character, and further that his observation founded on those visits was most careless and inaccurate ; for as Mr. Jackson justly observes (p. 324), "If we wish to know how far Aubrey is trustworthy as to what is gone, his plans should be tested, so far as they can, by what remains."
I have already instanced one such test in the case of the large Beckhampton stones; and in reference to that blunder, so utterly unaccountable in any person who had ever seen the stones in question, a blunder by which Aubrey has transplanted these large stones from their position in the Beckhampton avenue—a full mile eastward—to a position in the Kennet avenue, I may surely ask, "Is it at all surprising that any other stones ‘lying about or half-buried in the ground,’ in the neighbourhood of those Beckhampton stones, should not have ‘attracted his eye as stones that had ever formed part of the general structure’ ?"’
I will now apply Mr. Jackson’s test to the two instances selected by himself, and then to some other similar ones.
Aubrey, then, delineates the Kennet avenue as running in a straight line from Avebury, whereas Stukeley describes it as "curving a little’ Now happily we have left standing a very massive stone of this part of the avenue, in the east bank of the road leading from Avebury to Kennet, which conclusively proves the accuracy of Stukeley and the glaring inaccuracy of Aubrey’s plan. Of this part of the avenue Mr. Jackson says (p. 324), "Its course in that part cannot be identified with certainty, but it may have made a little deviation to avoid going up a hill."
Now, for my part, I cannot conceive it even possible that those who had moved the stone in question a distance of a mile-and-a-half from the head of the "Grey Wethers," literally "up hill and down dale," would be deterred from moving it a few yards further up a slight acclivity in order to place it in its allotted position ; but, however this may have been, there certainly the stone stands, implying by its actual position a distinct curve in the part of the avenue as it left Avebury.
And now with respect to the second test adduced by Mr. Jackson; i.e., the delineations, given by Aubrey and Stukeley respectively, of the vallum, or earthwork, surrounding the temple. On this point I admit that the engraving of Stukeley is too symmetrical ; this however may possibly have been the fault of the engraver, for I must here state that, however fanciful may have been some of his theories, this inaccuracy is the one solitary instance of the slightest deviation from scrupulous accuracy which I have ever detected in the plans or descriptions of Stukeley ; Mr. Long, in his admirable compendium, "Abury Illustrated," accurately describes this earthwork as "not quite circular;" but let anyone compare the two plans of Aubrey and Stukeley with that given by Mr. Long—which is, I think, singularly accurate—and he will see that the vallum of Aubrey deviates from that of Mr. Long much more in its irregularity than Stukeley’s does in regularity.
Thus much respecting the two test instances noticed by Mr. Jackson. I will now notice two others in addition.
Aubrey, in his "Survey," draws the southern circle or temple as just one-half the diameter of that of the northern temple, whereas Stukeley makes them of equal diameter.
Now happily we have remaining a segment of each of these circles or temples (five stones of the southern and four of the northern), sufficient to enable us to judge of the utter inaccuracy of this part of Aubrey’s plan; in which, over and above this grave blunder, he has dotted down the stones in the most "higgledy piggledy" manner and with the most utter disregard of their relative distances, whereas Stukeley has placed them all in their exact actual positions.
And then, as a final test, both Aubrey and Stukeley have given an engraving of the Church ; and here I venture to say that whilst that of Aubrey would be almost equally appropriate as the drawing of any other Church in Wiltshire, that of Stukeley, considering the small scale, is given with an accuracy that is really marvellous, an accuracy 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 Beckhampton avenue.
First then in the Kennet avenue we have remaining not only fourteen1 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 offering 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.
Note 1. Three of these stones are from a foot to eighteen inches below the surface.
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 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 axigienes 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 (7.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"’ 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 eightyfive 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 Beckhampton 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 causeway1, 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 further westward, lying on the surface of the causeway, is another sarsen stone, upwards of seven feet long, and of nearly equal width; a little further to the westward again from this stone, in the farm-yard of the manor-house called "Avebury Truslowe"’ there are several large stones; whilst at the edge of the pond at the road-side near the corner of the field in which the large stones of Beckhampton stand, there are several large sarsen stones, one of five feet six inches, another of five feet in length and others of nearly the same size. Then, some years ago, I availed myself of the opportunity when the field had been recently ploughed, and found several "sarsen chips" (7.e., small fragments of sarsen stones) near the north-east corner of the field in question, and other similar "chips" about mid-way between that corner and the "cove;" and others also a little beyond, or westward of, the cove itself; all these giving their mute testimony to Farmer Griffin’s destructive handiwork; for I have the assurance of my neighbour Mr. Kemm that such "chips" are only found in those places in which large sarsen stones have been broken up.
I have already spoken of the almost continuous line of sarsen stones for about half-a-mile in length in this westward direction from Avebury, along the presumed route of the Beckhampton avenue ; and when I state-—as I now do advisedly—that on no other line out of Avebury, besides that of the Kennet avenue, is there one-tenth proportion of sarsen stones as now exist on this precise line, I am, I think, entitled to ask, whether the evidence of the former existence of the Beckhampton avenue is not irresistible, and whether the merely negative evidence on the point of one so utterly careless and untrustworthy as I have shewn Aubrey to be, is entitled to the very slightest weight.
Bryan King (age 66). Avebury Vicarage, Sept. 10th, 1879.
Note 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.
Wessex from the Air Plate 36. Literary References
John Aubrey, Mon. Brit. (Bodleian Library, Oxford); plan of Avebury made 1663; reproduced in facsimile in W.A.M., vol. vii.
Willaim Stukeley, Abury, a temple of the British Druids, 1743.
William Long, ‘Abury Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine, vol. iv (January 1858), pp. 309-63. (This is by far thebest existing account of Avebury.)
Facsimiles of Aubrey’s plans of Avebury, and corrigenda of preceding paper; W.A.M. vii (December 1861) ,pp, 224—6.
The Rev, A, C. Smith, 'Excavations at Avebury W,A.M, x (January 1867), pp. 209-16. (An account of excavations made there by Mr. Smith, associated with Messrs. W. G. Lukis, W. Cunnington, and King, 29th September to 5th October 1865. Excavations were made in the Northern Inner Circle, near and also within the Cove itself, in the mound or embankment to the south-east, in the Southern Circle, and through the Great Outer Bank.)
William Long, 'Abury Notes’, W.A.M. xvii (March 1878), pp. 327-35. (Valuable notes on lost, buried, or destroyed stones in the circles and avenues, especially the Kennet Avenue.)
The Rev. Bryan King, Vicar of Avebury, ‘Avebury— The Beckhampton Avenue’, W.A.M. xviii (November 1879), pp. 377-83. (A vigorous defence of the Beckhampton Avenue, supported by evidence.)
‘A buried stone in the Kennet Avenue’, W.A.M. xxxviii (June 1913), pp. 12—14.
H. St. George Gray, Reports on Excavations at Avebury; published in the Reports of the British Association for the years 1908 (401-11), 1909 (271-84), 1911 (141-52), 1915 (174-89), 1922 (326-33).