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.”