Forty-seventh annual meeting at Tetbury and Malmesbury, July 18th, 19th, and 20th, 1922 : programme / Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society.

  • Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society
Date:
[1922]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Forty-seventh annual meeting at Tetbury and Malmesbury, July 18th, 19th, and 20th, 1922 : programme / Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be, The size of the stones forming the circle was enormous. One of the few left measures 17 feet long, 7 feet 7 inches wide, and 2 feet 4 inches thick. Another is 13 feet 10 inches long by 18 feet wide and 5 feet 6 inches thick. Of the 650 said to have completed the circle 15 remain upright, 12 lie flat, and 18 are known to lie buried. The earthwork was approached by an avenue—known as Kennet Avenue—from the south-east, of which 19 stones remain visible. Dr. Stukeley, who was the first to map Avebury to any extent systematically, asserted there was another avenue towards Beckhampton. This has not been generally accepted, but it is possible that some drawings by Stukeley which have lately been found may be useful in determining his statement. The dates assigned to Prehistoric monuments must necessarily be approximate only. It is held by some that the Avebury Circle is older than Stonehenge, mainly on the ground that the stones of the former are unworked while the Stonehenge sarsens are shaped. Whether of the Bronze Age or of Neolithic Period Avebury must stretch back toa time which it is difficult for the ordinary individual to visualize, for in 1922 how can one think of 2000 B.C., which, roughly, has been the date assigned to this great monument? A succession of distinguished archaeologists have studied the problem thus presented. From Aubrey (1663), Stukeley (1724), Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1819), William Long (1857), down to the present time, Avebury has been the subject of continuous speculation, and yet much remains to be solved. AVEBURY CHURCH. The Church of St. James stands just outside the rampart of the earthwork, and though it has suffered at the hands of the restorer there is interesting work remaining, especially of Saxon date. The Saxon nave had four windows on each side, unglazed and fitted with shutters on the outside, with small circular open- ings also unglazed high up in the clerestory. North and south aisles were added in the twelfth century, two arches being cut through the Saxon wall on each side with a pier of seven feet of wall left between them. In 1828 these Norman arcades gave way to the present arches, and when these were cut out the original Saxon wall over them was left undisturbed and in it were found three curious circular clerestory openings, one of which was not moved, though the others were taken down before their nature was discovered and later replaced in the modern clerestory windows. <A row of holes which runs round the edges of these circular openings is regarded by one authority as meant to hold sticks for a wattlework centre on which the splay of flint rubble might be turned.
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