Avebury

The village of Avebury in Wiltshire is home to the largest Stone Circle in England. The Circle is approached by a long avenue of paired standing stones called the West Kennet Avenue. Imagine the large ceremonial processions of robed Druids and followers who must have walked its length at one time! As shown in the following photo, enough stones still remain to give you a feel for its past glory. On the morning we were there, cows shared the Avenue with us, munching grass as we walked by.

Unfortunately, the ancient Circle and Avenue are today bisected by a roadway leading to the village of Avebury. So a few of the Avenue's stones now find themselves isolated across the road, like this one:

At the end of the Avenue is a huge tree. Walking past it, you come to two great megaliths which form a ceremonial entrance to the Circle. One of these stones has a large indentation like a built-in seat. (You can see it in the upcoming panoramic photo of the Circle). Druids and pagans call this stone "the Old Woman" (a clear reference to the Crone Goddess) and say that "sitting in the lap of the Old Woman" brings good luck and fertility. Like everyone else, I took my turn sitting in the lap of the Old Woman but phew! I'm not pregnant yet, LOL! Rather predictably, Christians and non-pagans call this indentation "the Devil's Chair."

In the following panoramic photo you can see how the Circle is bisected by the road. The road was built in an era when the Circle was not being preserved. In Puritan England during the 1600s, many of the standing stones were systematically toppled, buried or destroyed as evil pagan symbols. In the 1720s, an early champion of preservation angrily wrote:

And this stupendous fabric, which for some thousands of years, had brav'd the continual assaults of weather, and by the nature of it, when left to itself, like the pyramids of Egypt, would have lasted as long as the globe, hath fallen a sacrifice to the wretched ignorance and avarice of a little village unluckily plac'd within it.

Avebury still retains its "henge" or ditch that encircles the Stones. Our guide, Mara Freeman, said that in Druid times, the turf would have been cut away completely to expose the chalk "bones" of the earth. In those days, Avebury Circle would have been enclosed by a pure white henge.

Most of the Stones have official names and distinct personalities. I don't know their official names, but I think of this one as "Grumpy Old Man Stone" --

[All photos taken by my Rare One except for the panoramic shot of the Circle, which I found on the internet.]