During our research I had seen several articles where people mentioned that Avebury circle was so much better than Stonehenge. I didn't understand that till I actually got there and I have to agree. The Stones at Avebury circle are much larger. The whole complex is huge. It's diameter is 1.3 kilometres. It's so big that a small village sits inside the middle of it. It is the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. Unfortunately back in the 1600s the circles and henges were seen as the trappings of Witchcraft. People were encouraged to tear them down or knock them down. In fact some of the stones were knocked down and used to build part of the village. John Aubry documented much of the area in the 1600s before the worst of the destruction. Legend had it then when they were knocking over one of the Stones it landed on a person. Centuries later when Andrew Keller was resurrecting the stones and reconstructing the circle he found a man crushed under one of the stones. He was a barber/surgeon and had all those tools with them so it was an archaeological double bonus. At Avebury circle there is an avenue. The avenue consisted of 98 pairs of stones in a Serpentine path. The henge, a ditch and bank, at Avebury was 20 m deep. There are three concentric circles with the largest stones in the external circle and then smaller and smaller as you get towards the centre. There are sarsen stones and blue stones used here. Interestingly enough there is a type of lichen that grows on these stones and on Stonehenge stones that is found nowhere else in Great Britain. A lichenologist has studied this and is still unable to pinpoint the origin of this type of lichen. Perhaps it originated in Doggerland? Doggerland is the area between Great Britain and Denmark that was submerged 10,000 years ago.
An Ariel view of the circle and the town of Avebury
One of the two massive gate stones
These massive sarsen stones have not been worked, they retain the natural shape
The three adventurers
I see a face or two
The second gate stone
This is the outer ring with the largest stones
The next ring in had slightly less massive stones
The henge was 20 meters deep/tall it was used as a town dump for centuries
Rick is showing us the gate stones and preparing to show us the dousing rods
See how huge the henge is
Sheep were grazing amongst the stones
The second ring. The stones alternated large then small
So impressive
Thanks for the great tour, Rick
A new age human circle
Large small large small male female male female
These look like hands to me
The gate stones ready for dousing
These rods were very heavy
Both Leslie and I used them and they moved on their own. When I walked through the rods swung 360°
The smaller inner circle of bluestones
As the stones got smaller towards the inside, the priests would look larger
Ditch and bank
Compared to Stonehenge this place was nearly empty
We walked a good distance and there were still parts of the circle off in the distance
A fairy tree. JR Tolkien actually sat beneath this tree and took notes for the ring trilogy
Getting into the village area
There were three stones originally but the third one, a tall one, was toppled and used to build the house in the background
These were a stand alone u shaped structure
The barn used some stones too
