AVEBURY AND STONEHENGE.
If there existed any acknowledged facts or accepted data with regard to
the megalithic remains we are now treating of, the logical method of
following out the subject would be to describe first their geographical
distribution, and then their uses and dates. While, however, everything
concerning them is considered as uncertain--in fact, as unknown, such
a mode of treatment, though satisfactory to believers, would fail
to carry conviction to the minds of those who doubt. It appears,
therefore, that under the circumstances a preferable mode will be to
take three or four of the principal and best known British groups,
and to subject them to a tolerably exhaustive examination. If it is
possible to dispel the errors that have grown up around them, and to
fix their uses and dates on anything like a reasonable basis, the
rest will be easy; but so long as men believe in Druids or Dragons,
or even think it necessary to relegate these monuments to prehistoric
antiquity, it is useless to reason regarding them. By the process it
is proposed to follow, it is hoped at least to be able to dispel these
mists. Others must judge whether the landscape their dispersion will
reveal is either real, or pleasing to contemplate.
The first monument we propose selecting for examination is Avebury,
as the largest, and in some respects the most important of the class
in this country. Stonehenge might at first sight seem to have equal
claims to precedence, but it is exceptional. It is the only hewn stone
monument we possess, the only one where trilithons are found with
horizontal architraves, and where the outer circle also possesses
these imposts. It is, in fact, the megalithic monument which exhibits
the most civilized forms, and to prove its age and use would not
necessarily prove those of any rude stone monument found elsewhere.
Avebury, on the contrary, though larger than the others, is constructed
on precisely the same principle. It has the enclosing vallum, with its
ditch inside, like Arborlow, Marden, Arthur's round table, at Penrith,
and others we shall meet with further on, while its circle and avenues
are identical, as far as we can judge, with numerous examples found
elsewhere.
Before, however, proceeding to reason about Avebury, the first point
is to ascertain what the group really consists of, which is a much
more difficult task than would at first sight appear. Stukeley has
introduced so many of his own fancies into his description of the
place, and they have been so implicitly followed by all who have since
written on the subject, that it is now no easy task to get back to the
original form.
[Illustration: 14. View of Avebury restored. _a._ Silbury Hill. _b._
Waden Hill.]
The principal monument at Avebury consists of a vallum of earth nearly,
but not quite, circular in form, with an average diameter of about
1200 feet. Close on the edge of its internal ditch stood a circle
apparently originally consisting of about 100 stones, with a distance
consequently of about 33 feet from centre to centre. Inside this were
two other double circles, placed not in the axis of the great one,
but on its north-eastern side. The more northern one was apparently
350 feet in diameter, the other 325 feet.[77] In the centre of the
northern one stood what is here called a cove, apparently consisting
of three upright stones supporting a cap-stone--a dolmen, in fact,
such as we shall frequently meet with in the following pages. In the
southern circle there was only one stone obelisk or menhir. These facts
we gather from Stukeley and Colt Hoare, for all is now so completely
ruined and destroyed, that without their description no one could now
make even an approximate plan of the place. The stones that comprise
these inner as well as the outer circle are all the native Sarsens,
which occur everywhere on these downs. In some places, such as Clatford
Bottom, about a mile from Avebury, they lie still in numbers sufficient
to erect a dozen Aveburys, and many are still to be seen in the Bottoms
to the southward, and indeed in every place where they have not been
utilized by modern civilization. No mark of a chisel is to be seen
on any of the stones now standing here. For their effect they depend
wholly on their mass, and that is so great as to produce an impression
of power and grandeur which few of the more elaborate works of men's
hands can rival.
[Illustration: 15. Plan of Avebury Circle and Kennet Avenue, from Sir
R. Colt Hoare.]
From the outer vallum a stone avenue extended in a perfectly straight
line for about 1430 yards, in a south-easterly direction. The centre
was apparently drawn from the centre of the great 1200 feet circle,
not from those of the smaller ones. This is called the Kennet
Avenue, from its pointing towards the village of that name. I am
extremely sceptical with regard to the existence of another, called
the Beckhampton Avenue, on which Dr. Stukeley lays so much stress.
Aubrey did not see it, though he saw the Long Stone Cove, the "Devil's
Quoits," as he called them; and Stukeley is obliged to admit that in
his day not one stone was standing.[78] It seems that here, as, indeed,
everywhere over this country, a number of Sarsen stones were lying
about, and his fertile imagination manufactured them into the body of a
snake. None, however, are shown in Sir R. Colt Hoare's survey, and none
exist now; and beyond the Cove even Stukeley admits that he drew the
serpent's tail only because a serpent must have a termination of that
sort. There were no stones to mark its form any more then than now. The
first objection that appears against admitting the existence of the
very hypothetical avenue is, that no curved avenue of any sort is known
to exist anywhere, or attached to any monuments. All the curves of the
Kennet avenue are the Doctor's own, introduced by him to connect the
straight-lined avenues which were drawn from the circle at Avebury, and
that on Hakpen Hill. There are none at Stanton Drew, or other places
where he audaciously drew them. Near the church there are, or were,
two stones placed in the opening like that called the Friar's Heel,
and the prostrate stone at Stonehenge, but these are all that probably
ever existed of the Beckhampton Avenue. The question is not, however,
important. As there were two circles inside the Avebury vallum, there
may have been two avenues. All that is here contended for is, that
there is no proof of the existence of the second. A dolmen, called the
Long Stone Cove, existed near where Stukeley draws its sinuous line,
but there is nothing to show that it ever formed any part of such an
alignment; and around it there were some standing stones, or rather,
even in Stukeley's time, stones which apparently had stood, but there
is nothing to show whether forming part of a circle, or as detached
menhirs, or as parts of an avenue.
The second member of the Avebury group is the double circle, or rather
double oval, on Hakpen hill--Haca's Pen;[79] this was, according to
Stukeley, 138 feet by 155 feet, and had an avenue 45 feet wide, as
compared with 51 feet which Sir R. C. Hoare gives for those of the
Kennet avenue of Avebury. The avenue is supposed to have extended in
a perfectly straight line for above a quarter of a mile, pointing
directly towards Silbury Hill, which is about one mile and a quarter
distant.
The third member of the group is the famous Silbury Hill, about a mile
distant due south from Avebury. That these two last named are of the
same age, and part of one design, seems scarcely open to doubt; but it
is quite an open question whether Haca's Pen belongs either to the same
age or the same design. Its stones were very much smaller, its form
different, and its avenue pointing towards Silbury looks as if that
monument existed, and may have long existed before it was built; but of
this hereafter.
Besides these three there are numerous barrows, both long and round, in
the neighbourhood, and British forts and villages; but these we propose
to pass over at present, confining our attention in the first instance
to the three monuments above enumerated.
The first question that arises on looking at such a structure as
Avebury, is whether it is a temple at all. It has already been
attempted in the preceding pages to show what the temples of Britain
were in the ages immediately succeeding the Roman occupation; but even
if it is conceded that they were small basilicas, it will be contended
that this is no answer to the question. If Avebury, it will be said,
is a temple, it belonged to a mysterious, mythical, prehistoric people
capable of executing such wonderful works before they came in contact
with the Romans, but who, strange to say, were incapable of doing
anything after the civilizing touch of that great people had left them
feebler, and more ignorant than they were before!
If this question, What is Avebury? is addressed to one--brought up in
the Druidical faith as most Englishmen have been--he at once answers,
It is a temple of the Druids. If pressed and reminded of the groves
and the oaks these sectaries delighted in, he will perhaps admit
that no soil is so little likely to grow oaks as the chalk downs of
Wiltshire, and that there is no proof that any oaks ever grew in the
neighbourhood. But this is not a complete answer, for it may be
contended that for some reason we cannot comprehend, the Druids may
have dispensed with trees on this occasion. The real difficulty is, as
before mentioned, that no stones or stone structures are ever mentioned
in connection with Druids.
If an educated man whose mind is free from prejudice or pre-conceived
ideas is asked the question, he runs over in his own mind what he knows
of the temples of other peoples--Egypt, Assyria, Greece, Rome, in the
ancient or the middle ages. They produced nothing of the sort. Persia,
India, China, or the countries in the Eastern seas are all equally
unsuggestive; nor will Mexico or Peru help him. The first conclusion,
therefore, that he inevitably arrives at is, if these were the temples
of the Britons, they must indeed have been a "Peculiar people," unlike
any other race that lived at any time in any part of the world.
If they were temples, to what god or gods were they dedicated? It
could hardly have been Mercury, or Apollo, or Mars, Jove, or Minerva,
mentioned by Cæsar,[80] as the gods worshipped by the Druids--and
though perhaps these were only the nearest synonyms of Roman gods
applied to Celtic divinities, still there must have been such
resemblances as to have justified these appellations. We know of what
form the temples of these gods were, and certainly they were not built
after the fashion of the circles at Avebury. Some antiquaries have
timidly suggested a dedication to the Sun. But there is certainly no
passage in any author, classical or mediæval, which would lead us to
suppose that our forefathers were addicted to the worship of a deity so
unlikely to be a favourite in such a climate as ours. But again, what
is a sun temple? Does one exist anywhere? Had the Wiltshire shepherds
attempted it, they probably would have found the same difficulty that
beset the fire-worshipping Persians of old. It is not easy to get the
sun into a temple fashioned by human hands, and his rays are far more
available on high places or on the sea-shore than inside walls or
enclosures of any sort.
Even putting aside the question to what god it was dedicated, what
kind of worship could be performed in such a place? It could not be
for speaking in. Our largest cathedrals are 600 feet long, and no man
would attempt from the altar of the lady chapel to address a crowd
beyond the west door; still less would he in the open air attempt to
address a crowd in a circle 1200 feet in diameter, and where from the
nature of the arrangements one half of the audience must be behind him.
Still less is it fitted for seeing. The floor of the area is perfectly
flat, and though people talk loosely of the crowd that could stand on
the vallum, or on the berm, or narrow ledge between the internal ditch
and the foot of the rampart, they forget that only one row of persons
could stand on a sharp-pointed mound, and that the berm is on the same
level as the rest of the floor, and is the last place any one would
choose, as 100 great stones were put up in front of it as if especially
designed to obstruct the view. This was, in fact, the case with all the
stones. Assuming the ceremony or action to take place in the centre
of either of the two inner circles, the double row of stones which
surround them is so placed as to obstruct the view in every direction
to the utmost possible extent. It may be suggested that the priest
might climb on to the cap-stone of the cove, in the northern circle,
and there perform his sacrifice in sight of the assembled multitude. It
would be difficult to conceive any place so ill suited for the purpose;
and even then, how would he manage on the point of the obelisk in the
centre of the southern circle? No place, in fact, can be so ill adapted
for either seeing or hearing as Avebury; and those who erected it would
have been below the capacity of ordinary idiots if they designed it for
either purpose. Besides this, it has none of the ordinary adjuncts of a
temple. There is no sanctuary, no altar, no ark, no procession path, no
priests' house, nothing that is found more or less prominently forming
a part of every temple in every part of the world.
Why so hypæthral? Are we to understand that the climate of the
Wiltshire downs is so perfect and equable that men can afford to
dispense with roofs or the ordinary protection against weather? or are
we to assume that the men who could move these masses of stone and
raise these mounds were such utter savages that they could not erect an
enclosed building of any sort?
Egypt possesses the finest and most equable climate in the world;
yet all her temples are roofed in a more careful manner and more
stately than our mediæval cathedrals, and so are all those of India
and the Eastern climes where shelter is far less wanted than here.
In all these countries and climes the temples of the gods are the
dwellings or halls of men, enlarged and improved. What they did well
for themselves, they did better for their deities. Are men therefore to
assume that the Wiltshire shepherd slept on the snow in winter, with
no other protection than a circle of widely spaced stones, and had no
idea of a roof? Yet, if he were not hardened by some such process, it
is difficult to see why he should build a temple so exposed to the
inclemency of the weather that no ceremony could be properly performed
in it for one half of the days of the year.
Another objection to the temple theory that would strike most people,
if they would think about it, is the enormous size of Avebury. Its area
is at least five times that of St. Peter's at Rome; 250,000 people
could easily be seated within its vallum, and half a million could
stand. Men generally try to adapt the size of their buildings to the
amount of accommodation required. But where should such a multitude
as this come from? How could they be fed? How could they be lodged?
There is no reason to suppose that in any ancient time before the
introduction of agriculture, the pastoral population on these downs
could ever have been greater than, or so great as, that which now
exists there. When Doomsday Book was compiled, there were only two
hides of arable land in the manor, and they seem to have belonged to
the church. A fair inference from which seems to be that, but for the
superior knowledge and influence of the priesthood, the inhabitants of
these downs might, in the eleventh century, have remained in the same
state of pastoral barbarity in which there is every reason to believe
they were sunk in pagan times. How a few shepherds, sparsely scattered
over these plains, could have erected or have required such a temple as
this, is the mystery that requires to be explained. A very small parish
church now suffices for their spiritual wants; and if 10,000 pilgrims,
even at the present day, when agriculture has been extended to every
available patch of ground, visited the place for a week, many of them
would be starving before it was over.
It would be easy to adduce fifty other arguments of this sort. Many
more must indeed occur to any one who will give himself the trouble
to think of the matter; but to those who are accustomed to such
investigations the two most convincing probably are, first, that there
is no evidence whatever of progress in the design of Avebury. It was
built and finished as first designed. The second is, that in it there
is a total absence of ornament. In India, we have temples as big as
Avebury; but their history is written on their faces. The first step in
the process is generally that a small shrine, with a narrow enclosure
and small gateway, becomes from some cause or other, sacred or rich,
and a second enclosure is added to contain halls for the reception of
pilgrims or the ceremonial display on festal occasions. But no god in
that pantheon can live alone. New shrines are added for other deities,
with new halls, new residences for priests, and more accommodation for
all the thousand and one requisites of a great idol establishment. This
requires a third or fourth new enclosure, up even to a seventh, as at
Seringham. But in all this there is progress: 200 or 300 years are
required, and each century--sometimes each decade--leaves its easily
recognised mark as the work progresses. In like manner, the great
temple at Karnac, though covering only one-third the area of Avebury,
took the Egyptians three centuries to build, and every step of its
progress can be easily traced. The works of the earlier Thotmes differ
essentially from those of Manepthah and Rameses, and theirs again from
those of Seshonk; and these again differ essentially from the little
shrine of Osortasen, which was the germ of the whole.
So it was with all our cathedrals. The small Saxon church was
superseded by the Norman nave with a small apsidal choir. This was
enlarged into the Early English presbytery, and beyond this grew
the lady chapel, and as the ill-built Norman work decayed, it was
replaced by Tudor constructions. But there is nothing of the sort at
Avebury. Had the temple been built or begun by the sparse inhabitants
of these downs, we should have seen something to show where the work
began. They must have brought one stone one year and another the
next, and inevitably they would have employed their leisure hours,
like the inhabitants of Easter Island, in carving these stones either
with ornaments or symbols, or fashioning them into idols. There is
absolutely no instance in the whole world where some evidence of care
and of a desire after ornament of some sort is not to be traced in
the temples of the people. Nothing, however, of the sort occurs here.
Indeed, if there is one thing more evident than another about Avebury,
it is that, as it was begun, so it was ended. There is no hesitation,
no sign of change: the same men, to all appearance, who traced its plan
saw its completion; and as they designed it, so they left it. There is
no sign of any human hand having touched it from that hour henceforward
till the sordid greed of modern farmers set to work to destroy it,
to build with its materials the alehouse and the village which now
occupies a small portion of the enclosure.
So too with regard to ornament. This structure, we may fairly assume,
if a temple, must have been in use for some centuries; but during that
time, or any shorter time that may be assumed, no man had the skill
or the inclination to adorn the greatest temple of his native land
either with carving or emblems or ornament of any kind. The men who
could conceive the great design--so great and noble--could do nothing
more. Their hands drooped in listless idleness by their sides, and they
were incapable of further exertion! Such a state of affairs, if not
impossible, is certainly unparalleled. No such example exists anywhere
else with reference to any temple, so far as we know, in any part of
the world. Tombs do show these peculiarities at times, temples never.
If these reasons are sufficient to prove that Avebury was not a temple,
there are more than can be required, to show that it was not a place
of meeting of ancient Britons. Whatever may be thought of the extent
of prehistoric assemblies, it will hardly be contended that it was
necessary to provide accommodation for the 250,000 men who could be
seated in the great circle. Even supposing it were intended only to
accommodate 12,000 or 13,000 lords and as many commons in the two
subordinate rings, they would hardly have arranged an inner circle
of great stones in the middle of each assembly, or placed a spiked
obelisk for a woolsack in the one or a tall dolmen under or behind
the Speaker's chair in the other. Nothing in fact could be conceived
so utterly unsuited for the purpose as these rings, and unless these
primeval men were very differently constituted from ourselves, any
assembly of elder-men who were likely to meet at Avebury would have
preferred a room however rude, and of one-hundredth part of the extent,
for their deliberations to the unsheltered and unsuitable magnificence
of the Big Stones. Of course, among all rude people, and often also
among those more civilized, open-air assemblies of the people will
take place; but then these will always be near the great centres
of population. Men will go into the desert for religious purposes,
but they prefer talking politics nearer home. In some communities a
Campus Martius or a Thing field may be set apart for the purpose;
but the first requisite of such a place of assembly is that it shall
be open and free from encumbrance of any sort. A Mote hill too, like
the terraced Tynwald Mount in the Isle of Man, is an intelligible
arrangement, not for a deliberative assembly, but as a rostrum from
which to proclaim law. We can also understand why Shire courts should
be held on barrows, as seems often to have been the case. For here
the judge occupied a dignified position on the summit. His assessors
stood behind him, and the pleaders and people in front. Instances
are also known in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where local
courts were summoned to meet at the "standing stones," or in circles,
in Scotland at least;[81] but in all these instances it was apparently
to settle territorial disputes on the spot, and the stones or mounds
were merely indicated as well-known marks and, consequently, convenient
trysting-places. Even if this were not so, it would not be at all to
be wondered at that in the middle ages sepulchral circles or mounds
were habitually used as meeting-places. They were then old enough
to be venerable; and their antiquity must have conferred on them a
dignity suitable to the purpose, whatever their original destination
may have been. But all this is very different from erecting as a place
of assembly so huge and inconvenient a place as Avebury is, and always
must have been.
It seems needless to follow this line of argument further, for unless
it can be shown that the people who erected Avebury were so differently
constituted from ourselves that no reasoning derived from our
experience can be applied to them, the answer seems inevitable.
That no such Temple, nor has any such meeting-place, been built or
attempted by any set of men in any part of the world. But is there
any reason for supposing that the inhabitants of these downs differed
so essentially from ourselves? Dr. Thurnam has examined with care
some hundreds of skulls gathered from the grave-mounds in this
neighbourhood, and has published decades on decades of them.[82]
Yet the most learned craniologists cannot detect--except perhaps in
degree--any difference that would lead us to suppose that these ancient
men were not actuated by the same motives and governed by the same
moral influences as ourselves. If this is so, Avebury certainly was not
erected either as a temple or a place of assembly, in any sense of the
word which we can understand, and those who insist that it was either
are bound to explain what the motives or objects could have been which
induced the inhabitants of the Wiltshire downs to act in a manner so
entirely opposed to all we know of the actions or feelings of all other
nations in all other parts of the world.
* * * * *
If, therefore, Avebury was neither a temple nor a place of assembly,
what was it? The answer does not seem far to seek. It must have been
a burying-place, but still not a cemetery in the ordinary sense of
the term. The inhabitants of these downs could never have required a
bigger and more magnificent burying-place than any other community in
Great Britain, and must always have been quite unequal to raise such
a monument. But what is more important than this, a cemetery implies
succession in time and gradations in rank, and this is exactly what
is most conspicuously wanting at Avebury. It may be the monument of
one king or two kings, but it is not a collection of the monuments of
individuals of various classes in life, or of a series of individuals
of the same rank, erected at different intervals of time. As before
remarked, it is in one design--"totus teres atque rotundus," erected
with no hesitation and no shadow of change.
If, however, we assume that Avebury was the burying-place of those who
fell in a great battle fought on the spot, every difficulty seems
at once to vanish. It is now admitted that men did bury in stone
circles or under dolmens, and beside head-stones and within earthen
enclosures, and what we find here differs only in degree from what we
find elsewhere. It seems just such a monument as a victorious army of
say 10,000 men could, with their prisoners, erect in a week. The earth
is light, and could easily be thrown up into the form of the vallum,
and the Sarsen stones lay all over the downs, and all on a higher
level than Avebury, which perhaps for that very reason is placed on
the lowest spot of ground in the neighbourhood. With a few rollers and
ropes, 10,000 men would very soon collect all the stones that ever
stood there, and stick them up on their ends. They probably would have
no skilled labour in their ranks, and no leisure, if they had, to
employ it in ornamentation of any sort. Without this, it is just such a
monument as might and would be raised by an illiterate army wishing to
bury with honour those who had fallen in the fight, and having at the
same time no other means of leaving on the spot a record of their own
victory.
On theoretical grounds, there seems to be no argument that can be urged
against this view; and during the ten years that it has been constantly
before the public none have been brought forward that deserve notice.
It is urged, however, that the evidence is not complete, and that
nothing written serves to confirm this view. Those who make the
objection forget that one of the first conditions of the problem is
that those who erected such a monument should be illiterate. If they
could have written to any primeval 'Times,' they would not have taken
such pains to lithograph their victory on the spot. Had they been able
either to read or write, an inscription would have done more than the
200 or 300 stones of Avebury; but because they could not write, they
raised them, and, for that reason also, left us the problem of finding
out why they did so.
We are not, however, wholly without evidence on this subject. Many
years ago Mr. Kemble printed a charter of King Athelstan, dated in 939,
which, describing the boundaries of the manor of Overton, in which
Avebury is situated, makes use of the following expression:--"Then by
Collas barrow, as far as the broad road to Hackpen, thence northward up
along the Stone row, thence to the burying-places."[83] It does not
seem to be a matter of doubt that the stone row here mentioned is the
Kennet Avenue, nor that the burying-places (byrgelsas) are the Avebury
rings; but it may be urged that the Saxon surveyor did not know what
he was talking about; and as, unfortunately, he does not say who were
buried there, and gives no corroborative evidence, all we learn from
this is that they were so considered in the tenth century.
Something more tangible was nearly obtained shortly before Stukeley's
time, when Lord Stawell levelled the vallum next the church, where
the great barn now stands. The original surface of the ground was
"easily distinguishable by a black stratum of mould on the chalk. Here
they found large quantities of buck-horns, bones, oyster-shells, and
wood-coals. An old man who was employed on the work says there was a
quantity of a cartload of horns, that they were very rotten, and that
there were very many burned bones among them."[84] On the same page,
Dr. Stukeley adds: "Besides some Roman coins accidentally found in and
about Abury, I was informed that a square bit of iron was taken up
under one of the great stones upon pulling it down." Other Roman coins
have, I understand, been found there since, but there is no authentic
record of the fact which can be quoted. This is to be regretted; for
the presence, if ascertained, of these coins would go far to prove that
the erection of the monument was after their date, whatever that may be.
Unfortunately no scientific man saw these bones, so no one was able
to say whether they were human or not; but the presumption is that
they were, for why should burned bones of animals be placed in such
a situation? The answer to this is that the Wiltshire Archæological
Society have made some excavations at Avebury, and found nothing. In
1865, they tapped the vallum in various places, and dug one trench to
its centre, and, as they found nothing, concluded that nothing was
to be found. But in a mound 4442 feet long, according to Sir R. Colt
Hoare, there must be many vacant spots, especially if the bodies were
burnt; and such negative evidence cannot be considered as conclusive,
nor as sufficient to disprove the evidence acquired in Lord Stawell's
diggings. Stukeley's honesty in recording facts of this sort is hardly
to be suspected, though the inferences he draws from his facts are
generally to be received with the extremest caution. The Society also
dug in the centre of the northern circle, where the dolmen stood,
and penetrated to the original chalk, but found nothing except the
ruins of the stones which had been destroyed by fire, and express
great disappointment at finding "no human bones whatever."[85] If the
bodies were burnt--as we should be led to infer from what Lord Stawell
found under the vallum--what they probably would have found, had the
"Cove" been complete, would have been a vase or urn with ashes. The
barbarians who destroyed the stones are scarcely likely to have spared
so worthless a piece of crockery; and if it were broken at the time,
it would be in vain a hundred years afterwards to look either for it
or for bones that in all probability were never laid there. Nor need
better results have been expected from their trench, 60 feet long. A
man must know very exactly what he is looking for, and where to look
for it, who expects to find an object like an urn, a foot in diameter,
in a 28-acre field. Judging from the experience obtained at Crichie, in
Scotland, where a funereal deposit was obtained at the foot of every
one of a circle of stones that stood inside a ditch like the internal
one at Avebury, it is there we should expect to find the deposit.[86]
That is just where nobody has thought of looking at Avebury, though
nothing would be easier. There are fifty or sixty empty holes, and any
one might without difficulty be enlarged, and if there were a deposit
at the foot of each, it would then inevitably be found.
* * * * *
To this we shall return presently. Meanwhile let us see what evidence,
if any, is to be obtained from the circle on Hakpen Hill.
As before mentioned, this monument consists of two ovals, according to
Dr. Stukeley the outer one was 138 by 155 feet and the inner 45 by 51
feet. He does not give the dimensions of the stones; but Aubrey calls
them from 4 to 5 feet in height, which is confirmed by the Doctor's
engraving; and, altogether, they do not seem to average one-quarter the
size of those at Avebury. Of the avenue, only four stones are shown in
the plan woodcut (No. 16), and the same number is shown in the view
(plate xxi.). In both instances, the avenue is represented as perfectly
straight, and as trending rather to the southward of Silbury Hill.[87]
It extended, according to Aubrey, a quarter of a mile--say 440 yards.
[Illustration: 16. Circle on Hakpen Hill. From Stukeley.]
The most curious circumstance, however, connected with this circle is
that, at the distance of about 80 yards from the outer oval, there were
found two rows of skeletons, laid side by side, with their feet towards
the centre of the circles. In a curious letter, written by a Dr. Toope,
of Oxford, dated 1st December, 1685, addressed to Mr. Aubrey, and
published by Sir R. Colt Hoare,[88] it is said:--"I quickly perceived
them to be human." "Next day dugg up many bushells, with which I made
a noble medicine. The bones are large and nearly rotten, but the teeth
extream and wonderfully white. About 80 yards from where the bones were
found, is a temple 40 yards diameter, with another 15 yards; round
about bones layd so close that scul toucheth scul. Their feet all round
turned towards the temple, 1 foot below the surface of the ground. At
the feet of the first order lay the head of the next row, the feet
always tending towards the temple." Further on Aubrey asserts that a
ditch surrounded the temple, which Stukeley denies; but there seems no
difficulty in reconciling the two statements. The destruction of the
monument had commenced before Aubrey's time. For it is impossible to
conceive bodies lying for even 1000 or 1200 years in so light a soil,
at the depth of 1 foot or even 2 feet, exposed to the influence of rain
and frost, without their being returned to earth. Most probably there
was a ditch, and where there was a ditch there must have been a mound,
and that, if heaped over the bodies, might have protected them. The
vallum had disappeared in Aubrey's time; the ditch was filled up before
Stukeley's, and stones and all had been smoothed over in Sir R. Colt
Hoare's; so that now the site can hardly be defined with certainty. A
trench, however, cut across it, if it can be traced, might lead to some
curious revelations, for there can be no doubt whatever with regard
to the facts stated in Dr. Toope's letter. He was a medical man of
eminence, and knew human bones perfectly, and was too deeply interested
in the diggings, from which he drew "his noble medicine," and to which
he frequently returned, to be mistaken in what he stated.
Meanwhile, however, what interests us more at this stage of the
enquiry are the differences as well as the similarities of the two
monuments. The circles at Hakpen are on a very much smaller scale both
as to linear dimensions and the size of the stones than the circles
at Avebury; and the difference between burning and burying, which, so
far as the evidence goes, seems to have prevailed in the two places,
is also remarkable. Do they belong to two different ages, and, if so,
which is the elder? The evidence of the tumuli is uniform that the
inhabitants of this island buried before they burnt. But can these
bones be so old as this would force us to admit they were? So far as
the evidence at present goes, it seems impossible to carry the burials
on Hakpen Hill back to the earliest period of prehistoric interments;
the condition of the bones is sufficient to render such an hypothesis
untenable. Unless the phosphates and other component adjuncts remained
in them, they would have been as useless for medicine as for manure,
and the exposed position in which they lay would have reduced these to
dust or mud in a very few centuries. From the descriptions we have, the
bodies certainly were not in the contracted doubled-up position usual
in the so-called bronze age, and there were no traces of the cremations
apparently introduced by the Romans, and practised for some time after
they left. All appear to have been laid out in the extended position
afterwards adopted and continued to the present day. In fact everything
would lead us to suppose that Camden was not far wrong in saying that
these were the bones of the Saxons and Danes slain at the battle of
Kennet in A.D. 1006.[89] Even then, unless there was a mound
over them, they could hardly have lasted 600 years in the state in
which they were found. If we do not adopt this view, but insist that
Hakpen and Avebury are contemporary monuments, and part of one great
plan, the only hypothesis that occurs to me that will at all account
for their peculiarities is that the victorious army burnt and buried
their dead at Avebury, and that the defeated force got permission to
bury their dead more modestly on Hakpen Hill.
[Illustration: 17. Section of Silbury Hill.]
Silbury Hill, which forms the third member of our group, is situated
nearly due south from Avebury, at a distance of 1200 yards from the
outside of the ring, of the former, to the foot of the hill, or, as
nearly as may be, one Roman mile from centre to centre. Mr. Rickman[90]
based an argument on the latter fact, as if it proved the post-Roman
origin of the group; and like the many recurring instances of 100 feet
and 100 yards, which run through all the megalithic remains, it may
have some value, but, as a single instance, it can only be looked upon
as a coincidence.
The dimensions of the hill, as ascertained by the Rev. Mr. Smith, of
Yatesbury,[91] are that it is 130 feet in height, 552 feet in diameter,
and 1657 feet in circumference; that the flat top is 104 feet or 102
feet across,[92] according to the direction in which it is measured;
this last being another Roman coincidence, as the top has no doubt both
sunk and spread. The angle of the slope of the sides is 30 degrees to
the horizon.
In the year 1777 a shaft was sunk from the top of the mound to the
base, by order of the then Duke of Northumberland and Colonel Drax,
but no record has been preserved of what they found, or rather did
not find, for had they made any discovery of the least importance,
it certainly would have been communicated to some of the learned
societies of the day. Subsequently, in 1849, a shaft was driven nearly
horizontally from the southern face on the level of the original soil
to the centre, where it met the Duke's shaft; and subsequently a
circular gallery was carried round the centre, but in vain; nothing was
found in these excavations that would show that the mound had ever been
used for sepulchral purposes, or that threw any light whatever on its
history or destination.[93]
Judging from the analogies gathered from our knowledge of the parallel
Indian series, we ought not to be surprised if this really were the
only result. From the accounts of the Chinese travellers who visited
India in the fifth and seventh centuries, we learn that about one-half
of the topes they saw and described were erected to commemorate
events, and not to contain relics, or as simulated tombs. Wherever
Buddha or any of his followers performed any miracles, or where any
event happened of sufficient importance to make it desirable that the
memory of the locality where it happened should be preserved, there
a Tope was erected. To take an example as bearing more directly than
usual on our present subject. When Dutthagamini, king of Ceylon (161
B.C.), defeated the usurper Ellala, and restored the true
faith, "he erected near the capital a dagoba in commemoration of his
victory. A stone pillar marks the spot where the action commenced,
and another stone pillar exists there with an inscription to the
effect that it marks the spot rendered sacred by the death and blood
of Ellala."[94] The dagoba is a simple mound of earth, and, so far as
known, has never been opened. In Afghanistan, many of the topes opened
by Messrs. Masson and Honigberger were found to be what they call
"blind topes," but they were not able to detect by any external sign
whether their researches were likely to be rewarded with success or to
end in disappointment.[95]
Whether these analogies are worth anything or not, nothing appears, at
first sight at least, more probable than that, if the fallen chiefs
of a victorious army are buried at Avebury, the survivors should
have employed their prisoners as slaves to erect a mound on the spot
probably where the chiefs were slain and the battle decided. The
tradition, however, having been lost, the mound stands silent and
uncommunicative, and it is not easy now to read its riddle.
It is very premature, however, to speculate either on these analogies
or on the negative results of the explorations made into the hill:
these last were undertaken, like the diggings at Avebury, on the
empirical assumption that the principal deposit would be found in the
centre, and at Silbury on the ground level, which is exactly the place
where almost certainly it was not. Supposing that there is a low-level
sepulture at Silbury, it probably will be found within 30 or 40 yards
of the outer face of the mound, on the side looking towards Avebury,
if it is connected with that monument. But the knowledge we have
acquired, as will be afterwards detailed, from the examination of the
Minning Lowe, Arbor Lowe, Rose Hill tumuli, and other monuments of this
class, would lead us to expect to find the principal deposit near the
summit. The bit of a bridle (woodcut No. 18) and the traces of armour
which were found in Stukeley's time, near the summit, mark in all
probability the position of the principal graves, and nothing would
surprise me less than if five or six entombments were found arranged
around the upper plateau at a small depth below the surface. We shall
be in a better position to judge how far this is probable when we have
finished this chapter; but till the evidence is adduced, it is useless
to speculate on its effect.
[Illustration: 18. Iron Bit of Bridle. Found in Silbury Hill.]
At one time I hoped that the Roman road might be found to have passed
under the hill, and if this were the case, it would settle the question
as to whether it were pre- or post-Roman. In order to ascertain this,
some excavations were made into the hill in 1867, and simultaneously
on the high ground to the southward of it. As traces which seemed
undoubtedly to mark the existence of the road running past the hill,
at about 50 to 100 yards to the southward, were found there, the
excavations into the hill were discontinued, and the line of the road
considered as established. Owing to various mishaps, no plan of these
discoveries has yet been published, but the annexed woodcut, which is
traced from the Ordnance Survey sheet, will suffice to explain its
bearing on the question.
[Illustration: 19. Plan of Avebury, from Ordnance Survey. The line of
the Roman road is hatched throughout.]
Standing on Silbury Hill and looking westward, the road coming from
Bath over the downs seems to come direct at the hill. After passing the
Devizes road, it trends to the southward, and shortly again resumes
its original direction. About a mile before it reaches the hill, it
again resumes its southward direction, and passes it at a distance
of between 50 to 100 yards, making, apparently, for the spot where
the bridge over the Kennet now exists, and may have existed in Roman
times. Those who contend for the pre-Roman antiquity of the hill rest
their case on the assumption that the Romans always made or wished to
make their roads perfectly straight, and that this being deflected to
the south, it was in consequence of the hill being there at the time
the road was made. This, however, is singularly contradicted by the
line of this very road westwards from the Devizes road. According to
the Ordnance Survey, it is set out in a curve for 3½ miles till it
meets the Wandsdyke. Why this was done is not clearer than why the road
should have been curved to the eastward of the Devizes road. But, on
the other hand, supposing the hill to have been where it now stands,
and the Romans wished the road to be straight, nothing in the world was
so easy as for them to set out a line mathematically straight between
the Devizes road and the point where it passes the hill. The country
is and was perfectly open, and quite as flat as any Roman road-maker
could desire, and signals could have been seen throughout with perfect
facility. It is crediting the Roman surveyors with a degree of
stupidity they certainly did not show elsewhere, to say, if they wanted
a straight road, that seeing the hill before their eyes, they first
set out their road towards it, when they knew that before they had
advanced a mile, they must bend it so as to avoid that very obstacle.
Even then they would have tried to make it as straight as possible,
and would have adopted the line of the present coach-road, which runs
inside their line and between it and the hill. At the same time, if
any one will turn to Sir R. Colt Hoare's map of the Roman roads in
this district--"Stations Calne and Swindon"--which includes Avebury,
he will find that all are set out in lines more or less curvilinear,
and sometimes violently so, when any object was to be gained by so
doing. Though, therefore, as a general rule, it is safe to argue on the
presumption of the straightness of Roman roads, it may lead to serious
error to rely on such evidence in every instance.
The inference drawn from the piece of the Roman road further eastward
on Hakpen Hill is the same. It is perfectly distinct and quite straight
for about a mile, but if it had been continued in that line, it would
have passed the hill at a distance of at least 200 yards to the
southward, and never have joined the other piece till long after it
had passed the Devizes road. It was deflected northward in the village
of Kennet, apparently to reach the bridge, and then to join the piece
coming from Bath.
The result of all this seems to be, that the evidence of the Roman
road is inconclusive either way and must be withdrawn. Taking the
point where it passes the Devizes road, and the piece which is found
on Hakpen hill as fixed points, to join these it must have passed
considerably to the southward of the hill; whether it did so in a
mathematically straight line or in one slightly curved, was a matter
for the judgment of the surveyor; but till we know his motives, it is
not in our power to found any argument upon them.
[Illustration: 20. Elevation of the Bartlow Hills. From the
'Archæologia,' xxx.]
If, however, the Roman road refuses to give evidence in this cause,
the form of the hill offers some indications which are of value. As
before mentioned, it is a truncated straight-lined cone, sloping at an
angle of 30° to the horizon, while all the British barrows known are
domical or, at least, curvilinear in section. In all his experience,
Sir R. Colt Hoare met with only one straight-lined monument of this
class, which consequently he calls the Conical Barrow. Whether it
was truncated or not is not quite clear. There are bushes, or weeds,
growing out of the top, which conceal its form.[96] Nothing was found
in the barrow to indicate its age except a brass (bronze?) spear-head,
but it was attached to a British village, apparently of the Roman
period, inasmuch as iron nails and Roman pottery were found in it.[97]
Be this as it may, there are a range of tumuli at Bartlow, on the
boundary between Essex and Cambridgeshire, which are all truncated
cones, and are undoubtedly of Roman origin. A coin of Hadrian was
found in the chamber of one of them, and Mr. Gage, and the other
archæologists who were present at the opening, were all agreed that all
the four opened were of about the same age.[98] We may therefore feel
assured that they were not earlier than the time of Hadrian, though
from the style of workmanship of the various articles found, I would
feel inclined to consider them somewhat more modern, but that is of
little consequence. The point that interests us most is, that the angle
of the Conical Barrow quoted above is 45° to the horizon, that of the
principal tumuli at Bartlow 37½° and that of Silbury Hill 30°. Here
we certainly have a sequence not long enough to be quite satisfactory,
but still of considerable value, as an indication that Silbury hill was
post-Roman.
On the other hand, we have undoubted evidence that the truncated
conical form was common in post-Roman times. We have one, for instance,
at Marlborough, close by, and if that place was Merlin's bury, as Sir
R. Colt Hoare would fain persuade us it was, it assists us considerably
in our argument. Without insisting on this, however, Mr. George Clark,
in his most valuable paper on Ancient English Castles,[99] enumerates
ninety truncated cones erected in England, he considers, between the
Roman times and the Norman conquest. "These earthworks," he says,
"may be thus described: First was cast up a truncated cone of earth,
standing at its natural slope from 50 feet to 100 feet in diameter at
the top, and from 20 feet to 50 feet high."[100] Mr. Clark does not
believe that these were ever sepulchral, nor does it occur to him that
they might be memorial. I should, however, be disinclined to accept
the first conclusion as absolute till excavations had been made into
some of them, at least, where I fancy we may find indications rather
tending the other way. Whether they were memorial or not must depend
on traditions that have not hitherto been looked for. Mr. Clark's
contention was that all had at some time or other been used for
residential purposes, and as fortifications, and many are recorded as
having been erected as castles. All this is probably quite correct, but
the point that interests us here is, that there are nearly one hundred
examples of truncated cones of earth thrown up in England after the
Roman times, and not one before. If this is so, the conclusion seems
inevitable that Silbury Hill must belong to the latter age. Whether
this conclusion can be sustained or not, must depend on what follows
from the other monuments we are about to examine. The evidence of the
monument itself, which is all we have hitherto had an opportunity of
bringing forward, may be sufficient to render it probable, but not to
prove the case. Unless other examples can be adduced whose evidence
tends the same way, the case cannot be taken as proved, however strong
a _prima facie_ presumption may be established.
* * * * *
[Illustration: 21. Marden Circle. From Sir R. C. Hoare. No Scale.]
Though a little distant, it may be convenient to include the Marden
circle in the Avebury group. It is situated in a village of that name
seven miles south of Silbury Hill. When Sir R. Colt Hoare surveyed it
fifty years ago, the southern half of the vallum had been so completely
destroyed, that it could not be traced, and he carried it across the
brook, making the whole area about fifty-one acres.[101] My impression
is that this is a mistake, and that the area of the circle was only
about half that extent. The rampart was of about the same section as
Avebury, and the ditch was inside as there. Within this enclosure were
two mounds, situated unsymmetrically, like the circles at Avebury. The
greater one was opened with great difficulty, owing to the friable
nature of the earth of which it was composed; and Mr. Cunnington was
convinced that it was sepulchral, and contained one or more burials
by cremation; but Sir R. Colt Hoare was so imbued with the Druidical
theory as to Avebury, that he could not give up the idea that so
similar a monument must be also a Druidical altar, and the whole a
temple. The second barrow was too much ruined to yield any results, and
on revisiting the spot, it was found to have been cleared away. A great
part of the vallum had also been removed, but in it was found at least
one skeleton of a man who had been buried there.[102] How many more
there may have been it is impossible to say. The destroyers of these
antiquities were not likely to boast of the number of bodies they had
disturbed.
The great interest of this circle is that it contains in earth the
counterpart of what was found at Avebury in stone; not that this
necessarily betokens either an earlier or a later age. There are no
stones to be found at Marden, which is on the edge of the chalk, while
the country about Avebury was and is covered with Sarsens to this
day. It may, however, be considered as very positive evidence of the
sepulchral nature of that monument, if such were needed, and if it
were thoroughly explored, might perhaps settle the question of the age
of both. In this respect, the Marden monument affords a better field
for the explorer than Avebury. The destruction or disfigurement of its
mound, or vallum, would be no great loss to antiquaries, if a proper
record were kept of their present appearance; while to do anything
tending towards the further dilapidation of Avebury is a sacrilege from
which every one would shrink.
* * * * *
Before leaving the neighbourhood it now only remains to try and
determine who the brave men were who were buried at Avebury, and who
the victors who raised the mound at Silbury, assuming that the one is
a burying place, and the other a trophy. Some years ago I suggested
it was those who fell in Arthur's last and greatest battle of Badon
Hill, fought somewhere in this neighbourhood in the year A.D.
520,[103] and nothing that has since occurred has at all shaken my
conviction in the correctness of this determination,[104] but a good
deal has tended to confirm it.
The authors of the 'Monumenta Britannica' fix the site of this battle
at Banesdown, near Bath, which is the generally received opinion.[105]
Carte, and others, have suggested Baydon Hill, about thirteen miles
west by north from Avebury, while Dr. Guest carries it off to Badbury,
in Dorset,[106] a distance of forty miles. Unfortunately, Gildas, who
is our principal authority on this matter, only gives us in three
words all he has to say of the locality in which it was fought--"Prope
Sabrinum Ostium";[107] and it has been asserted that these words are
an interpolation, because they are not found in all the ancient MSS.
If they are, however, an insertion, they are still of very ancient
date, and would not have been admitted and repeated if they had not
been added by some one who knew or had authority for introducing them.
As the words are generally translated, they are taken to mean near the
mouth of the Severn, a construction at once fatal to the pretensions
of Bath, which it is impossible any one should describe as near that
river, even if any one could say where the mouth of that river is. It
is most difficult to determine where the river ends and the estuary
begins, and to a mediæval geographer, especially, that point must
have been much nearer Gloucester than even Bristol. This, however,
is of little consequence, as the words in the text are not "Sabrinæ
ostium," but "Sabrinum ostium"; and as the river is always spoken of
as feminine, it is not referred to here, and the expression can only
be translated as "near the Welsh gate." Nor does it seem difficult to
determine where the Welsh gate must have been.
The Wandsdyke always seems to have been regarded as a barrier erected
to stop the incursions of the Welsh into the southern counties, and
that part of it extending from Savernake forest westward, for ten or
twelve miles, seems at some comparatively recent period to have been
raised and strengthened[108] (either by the Belgæ or Saxons) to make
it more effectual for that purpose. According as an army is advancing
northward from Winchester, or Chichester to the Severn valley, or is
marching from Gloucester or Cirencester towards the south, the rampart
either protects or bars the way. In its centre, near the head-waters
of the Kennet, the Saxons advanced in 557 to the siege of Barbury
Castle, and having gained that vantage ground, they again advanced in
577 to Deorham, and fought the battle that gave them possession of
Glewanceaster, Cyrenceaster, and Bathanceaster.[109] What they then
accomplished they seem to have attempted unsuccessfully thirty-seven
years earlier, and to have been stopped in the attempt by Arthur
at Badon Hill. If this is so, there can be very little difficulty
in determining the site of the Welsh gate as that opening through
which the road now passes 2½ miles south of Silbury Hill, in the
very centre of the strengthened part of the Wandsdyke. If this is
so, the Saxons under Cerdic must have passed through the village of
Avebury, supposing it then existed, on their way to Cirencester; and
if we assume that they were attacked on Waden hill by Arthur, the
whole history of the campaign is clear. If we may rely on a nominal
similarity the case may be considered as proved. Waden is the name by
which the hill between Avebury and Silbury is called at the present
day by the people of the country, and it is so called on the Ordnance
survey sheets, and etymologically Waden is more like Badon than Baydon,
or Badbury, or any other name in the neighbourhood. The objection
to this is that Waden Hill is not fortified, and that Gildas speaks
of the "Obsessio Montis Badonici." It is true there is no trace of
any earthworks on it now, but in Stukeley's time there were tumuli
and earthen rings (apparently sepulchral) on its summit, which are
represented in his plates; but no trace of these now remains. The hill
was cultivated in his day, and in a century or so beyond his time all
traces of ramparts may have been obliterated, supposing them to have
existed. The true explanation of the difficulty, however, I believe to
be found in Jeffrey of Monmouth's account of these transactions. He
is a frail reed to rely upon; but occasionally he seems to have had
access to authorities now lost, and their testimony at times throws
considerable light on passages of our history otherwise obscure.
According to him there was both a siege and a battle; and his account
of the battle is so circumstantial and so probable, that it is
difficult to believe it to be a pure invention. If it is not, every
detail of his description would answer perfectly to an attack on an
army posted on Waden Hill.[110] The siege would then probably be that
of Barbury Hill, which Cerdic would be obliged to raise on Arthur's
advance; and retreating towards the shelter of the Wandsdyke, he was
overtaken at this spot and defeated, and so peace was established for
many years between the Brits and the Saxons. It may be true that the
written evidence is not either sufficiently detailed or sufficiently
precise to establish the fact that the battle was fought on this spot.
It must, however, be conceded that nothing in all that is written
contradicts what is here advanced, and when to this we add such a
burying place, Avebury at one end of Waden Hill, and such a monument
as Silbury Hill at the other, the proofs that it was so seem to me to
amount as nearly to certainty as we can now expect to arrive at in such
matters.
Those who believe, however, that all these monuments are absolutely
prehistoric, will not, of course, be convinced by any argument derived
from a single monument; but if it should turn out that even a more
certain case can be made out for the equally modern age of others, that
point must eventually be conceded. When it is, I feel no doubt that it
will come eventually to be acknowledged that those who fell in Arthur's
twelfth and greatest battle were buried in the ring at Avebury, and
that those who survived raised these stones and the mound at Silbury
in the vain hope that they would convey to their latest posterity the
memory of their prowess.
STONEHENGE.
Although from its exceptional character Stonehenge is not so valuable
as some others for evidence of the age or uses of the rest of the
monuments of this class, it is in some respects even more important
for our argument, inasmuch as it possesses a more complete mediæval
history than almost any other of the series. It must be confessed that
this history is neither so clear nor so complete as might be wished;
but, with the other evidence that can be adduced, it makes up a case so
strong as to leave little to be desired. Before, however, proceeding to
this, it is necessary to ascertain what Stonehenge really is, or rather
was, for strange to say, though numberless restorations of it have
been published, not one is quite satisfactory. There is very little
discrepancy of opinion with regard to the outer circle or the five
great central trilithons, but there is the greatest possible variety of
opinion as to the number and position of the smaller stones inside the
central or between the two great circles.
[Illustration: 22. General Plan of Stonehenge. From 'Knight's Old
England.']
There seems to be no doubt that the outer stone circle originally
consisted of thirty square piers, spaced tolerably equally in the
circle. Though only twenty-six can now be identified, either standing
or lying in fragments on the ground, it seems equally certain that
they were all connected by a continuous stone impost or architrave,
though only six of these are now in _situ_.[111] The diameter of the
circle is generally stated to be about 100 feet, and as this has been
suggested as a reason for its being considered as post-Roman, it is
important to know what its exact dimensions are. It turns out that
from the face of one pier to that of the opposite one, where both are
perpendicular, the distance is 97·6, or exactly 100 Roman feet. The
distance from the outer face of these piers to inside of the earthen
vallum that surrounds the whole is again 100 feet, though that cannot
now be ascertained within a foot or two, or even more; but as this
makes up the 100 yards and the 100 feet which recur so often in these
monuments, these dimensions can hardly be considered accidental, and
"valeant quantum" are an indication of their post-Roman date.[112]
Inside these outer circles stand the five great trilithons. Since the
publication of Sir R. Colt Hoare's plan, their position and plan may
be considered as settled. According to him, the height of the outer
pair is 16·3, of the intermediate pair 17·2, and of the great central
trilithon as it now stands 21·6. In their simple grandeur they are
perhaps the most effective example of megalithic art that ever was
executed by man. The Egyptians and Romans raised larger stones, but
they destroyed their grandeur by ornament, or by their accompaniments;
but these simple square masses on Salisbury plain are still unrivalled
for magnificence in their own peculiar style.
All the stones in these two great groups are Sarsens, as they are
locally called, a peculiar class of silicious sandstone that is found
as a local deposit in the bottoms of the valleys between Salisbury and
Swindon. It is the same stone as is used at Avebury, the difference
being that there the stones are used rough in their natural state,
here they are hewn and fitted with very considerable nicety. Each of
the uprights has a tenon on its surface, and the undersides of the
architrave, or horizontal piece, have each a mortice, or rather two
mortices, into which these tenons fit with considerable exactness.
[Illustration: 23. Stonehenge as at present existing, from Mr.
Hawkshaw's plan.]
Besides these there are even now eleven stones, some standing, others
thrown down, but still existing, within the inner circle. These are
of a different nature, being all cut from igneous rocks, such as are
not to be found nearer than Cornwall or even Ireland. It has not been
exactly ascertained whence they came; indeed, they seem to be of
various kinds, and consequently must have been brought from different
places. Locally they are called Blue stones, and it may be well to
adopt that short title for the present, as involving no theory, and as
sufficing to distinguish them from the local Sarsens.
[Illustration: 24. Plan of Stonehenge restored.]
None of the blue stones are large; one of the finest (23 in Sir R. Colt
Hoare's plan) is 7 feet 6 inches high, 2 feet 3 inches wide at base,
tapering to 1 foot on top. The others are generally smaller. One blue
stone opposite 23 is grooved with a channel from top to bottom, though
for what purpose it is not easy to guess. On the most cursory glance,
it is evident that these stones generally stood in pairs, about 3 feet
apart; but some are so completely overthrown and displaced, that it
is not quite clear whether this can be predicated of all. Entering
the choir on the left hand we find one that seems to stand alone. But
we may infer that this was not always so, from the circumstance that
there lies close by it an impost stone with two mortice holes in it,
only 3 feet 6 inches apart, which must have belonged to a smaller order
of trilithons, and is just such as would fit a pair of blue stones.
The next pair on the left is very distinct, and stands between the two
great trilithons. The next pair is also similarly situated. On the
opposite side there are two pairs, but situated, as far as can be made
out, in front of, and not between the trilithons; and again, there
are two blue stones behind the stone called the Altar stone, but so
displaced by the fall of the great trilithon behind them, that it is
impossible to make out their original position with certainty.
It will probably be impossible to determine whether all the pairs of
the stones were miniature trilithons or not, till we are able to turn
over all the stones that now strew the ground, and see if there is a
second stone with two mortices 3 or 4 feet apart. In the meanwhile
there is a passage in Henry of Huntingdon's work which may throw some
light on the subject. He describes "Lapides miræ magnitudinis in modum
portarum elevati sunt, ita ut portæ portis superpositæ videantur."[113]
With a very little latitude of translation, this might be taken as
referring to the great trilithons towering over the smaller; but
if we are to adhere to the literal meaning of the words, this is
inadmissible. Another explanation has therefore been suggested. The
impost stone of the great trilithon has apparently mortice holes on
both sides. If those on one side are not mere wearings of the weather,
this must indicate that something stood upon it. If we assume two
cubical blocks, and raise on them the stone now called the Altar stone,
which is of the exact dimensions required, we would have an arrangement
very similar to that of the Sanchi gateway,[114] a cast of which is
now exhibiting at South Kensington, and which would fully justify
Huntingdon's words. If it is objected that it is a long way to go to
Sanchi to look for a type, it may be answered that the Imperial coins
of Cyprus show a very similar construction, and both may be derived
from a common centre. On the whole, however, I am inclined to the first
explanation. There certainly were large and small trilithons, and too
great accuracy of description is not to be expected from a Latin writer
in the middle ages.
A good deal of astonishment has been expressed at the labour it must
have required to transport these blue stones from Cornwall or Wales
and to set them up here. If we refer them to the pre-Roman times of
our naked blue painted ancestors, the difficulties are, of course,
considerable. But after Roman times, the class of vessels they were in
the habit of building in these islands must have made their transport
by sea easy, even if they came from Ireland, as I believe they did. And
any one who has seen with what facility Chinese coolies carry about
monolithic pillars 10 feet and 12 feet long, and thick in proportion,
will not wonder that twenty or thirty men should transport these from
the head of Southampton water to Stonehenge.[115] With the works the
Romans left, and the modicum of civilization the natives could not fail
to have imbibed from them, the whole was simple, and must have been
easy.
Still more wonder has been expressed at the mass of the stones
composing the great trilithons themselves, and speculations have been
rife as to how our forefathers could, without machinery, drag these
masses to the spot, and erect them as they now stand. A good deal of
this wonder has been removed, since it was understood that the Sarsens
of which they are composed are a natural deposit, found on the surface
on all the bottoms in the Wiltshire downs. Owing to the progress of
civilization, they have disappeared about Salisbury, but they are still
to be seen in hundreds in Clatford bottom, and all about Avebury, and
in the northern portion of the downs. The distance, therefore, that
the stones of Stonehenge had to be dragged was probably very small;
and over a hard, even surface of chalk down, with a few rollers and
ropes, must have been a task of no great difficulty. Nor would the
process of blocking them up with a temporary mound composed of wood
and chalk be one that would frighten a rude people with whom time was
no object. After all, Stonehenge is only child's play as compared
with the monolithic masses the Egyptians quarried, and carved, and
moved all over their country, long before Stonehenge was thought of,
and without machinery in the sense in which we understand the term.
In India, our grandfathers might have seen far more wonderful things
done before we crushed all feeling and enterprise out of the people.
The great gateway, for instance, at Seringham is 40 feet high, 21 feet
wide, and 100 feet deep. The four door posts are each of a single block
of granite, more, consequently, than 40 feet in length, for they are
partially buried in the earth. The whole is roofed by slabs of granite,
each more than 21 feet long, and raised to the height of 40 feet;
and all of these, though of granite, are elaborately carved. Yet the
building of the gateway was stopped by our quarrel with the French for
the possession of Trichinopoly in the middle of the last century. The
Indians in those days had no machinery, but with plenty of hands and
plenty of leisure mountains may be raised; and it is on this principle
that barbarous nations act and by which they achieve such wonders. The
masses of Stonehenge are not, however, so very great after all, but
they impose by their simplicity. To use an apparent paradox, it is one
of the most artistic buildings in the world from its very want of art.
The 40 feet monoliths of Seringham do not impress as much as the 20
feet stones of Stonehenge, because the one is covered with sculpture,
the other more nearly in a state of nature, and the effect on the mind
is immensely enhanced by the monolithic simplicity of the whole.
Strange to say, this very grandeur and apparent difficulty is one of
the most common reasons adduced for its pre-Roman antiquity. Few can
escape from an ill-defined impression that what is great and difficult
must also be ancient, though the probability is, that if the feeling
were analyzed it would be found to have arisen from the learning we
imbibed in the nursery, and which told us of the giants that lived in
the olden time. If, however, we turn from the teachings of nursery
rhymes to the pages of sober history, what we learn is something very
different. Without laying too much stress on the nakedness and blue
paint of our ancestors, all history, and the testimony of the barrows,
would lead us to suppose that the inhabitants of this island, before
the Romans occupied it, were sparse, poor in _physique_, and in a very
low state of civilization. Though their national spirit may have been
knocked out of them, they must have increased in number, in physical
comfort, and in civilization during the four centuries of peaceful
prosperity of the Roman domination, and therefore in so far as that
argument goes, became infinitely more capable of erecting such a
monument as Stonehenge after the departure of the Romans than they had
been before their advent.
It certainly appears one of the strangest inversions of logic to assume
that the same people erected Stonehenge who, during the hundreds, or
it may be the thousands, of years of their occupation, could attempt
nothing greater than the wretched mole-hills of barrows which they
scraped up all over the Wiltshire downs. Not one of those has even a
circle of stone round its base; nowhere is there a battle stone or a
stone monument of any sort. Though the downs must have been covered
with Sarsens, they had neither sense nor enterprise sufficient even to
set one of those stones on end. Yet we are asked to believe that the
same people, in the same state, erected Stonehenge and Avebury, and
heaped up Silbury Hill. These monuments may be the expression of the
feelings of the same race; but if I am not very much mistaken, in a
very different and much more advanced state of civilization.
* * * * *
We shall be in a better position to answer a question which has
frequently been raised, whether or not the blue stones were a part
of the original structure, or were added afterwards, when we have
discussed the materials for the history of its erection; meanwhile
we may pass from these, which are the really interesting part of the
structure, to the circle which is generally supposed to have existed
between the outer circle of Sarsens and the inner choir of great stones.
With regard to this nothing is certain, except in respect to eight
stones, which stretched across the entrance of the choir, and may
consequently be called the choir screen. Of the four on the right hand
side only one has fallen, but it is still there; on the left hand only
two remain, and only one is standing, but the design is perfectly
clear. The two central stones are 6 feet high, and the stones fall off
by regular gradation right and left to 3 feet at the extremities. They
are rude unhewn Sarsen stones, but there is nothing to indicate whether
they were, or were not, a part of the original design.
Beyond this, between the two great Sarsen circles, there exist some
nine or ten stones, but whether they are in _situ_ or not, or whether
they were ever more numerous, it seems impossible to determine. On
the left hand, near the centre, are a pair that may have been a
trilithon, but the rest are scattered so unsymmetrically that it
would be dangerous to hazard any conjecture with regard to their
original arrangement. It seems, however, most improbable that while
the choir screen is so nearly entire even now, that this circle, if it
ever existed, should have been so completely destroyed. Had it been
complete, it would probably have consisted of 40 stones (excluding, of
course, the choir screen), and of these only 10, if so many, can be
said to belong to it. These are rude unhewn stones, and of no great
dimensions.
In addition to these, there are two stones now overthrown lying inside
the vallum, unsymmetrically with one another, or with anything else.
Here again the question arises, were there more? There is nothing on
the spot to guide us to our answer, and as nothing hinges upon it, I
may perhaps be allowed to suggest that each of these marks a secondary
interment. At the foot of each, I fancy urns or bones, or some evidence
of a burial might be found, and if the place had continued for a
century as a burying place, it might have been surrounded by its circle
of stones, like Avebury, or Crichie, or Stanton moor. The place,
however, may have become deserted shortly after these two were erected,
and none have been added since.
There are still two other stones, one standing, one lying in the short
avenue that leads up to the temple. Their position is exactly that
of the two stones, which are all that is visible of the so-called
Beckhampton avenue, at Avebury. But what their use is it is difficult
to guess. Were either of the places temples, they would have been
placed opposite one another on each side of the avenue, so that the
priests in procession and people might pass between, but being placed
one behind the other in the centre of the roadway, they must have had
some other meaning. What that may have been I am unable to suggest. The
spade may tell us if judiciously applied, but except from the spade I
do not know where to look for a solution of the riddle.
Those who consider that Stonehenge was a temple have certainly much
better grounds for such a theory than it would be possible to establish
in respect to Avebury. Indeed, looking at the ground plan above, there
is something singularly templar in its arrangement. In the centre is
a choir, in which a dignified service could be performed, and a stone
lies now just in such a position as to entitle it to the appellation it
generally receives of the altar stone. Unfortunately for this theory,
however, it lies flush with the ground, and even if we assume that
the surface has been raised round it, its thickness is not sufficient
to entitle it to be so called, judging from any analogous example we
know of elsewhere. Around the choir is what may fairly be considered
the procession path; and if its walls had only been solid, and there
were any indications that the building had ever been roofed, it would
be difficult to prove that it was not erected as a temple, and for
worship. As, however, it has no walls, and it is impossible to believe
that it was ever intended to be roofed, all the arguments that apply to
Avebury in this respect are equally applicable here, with this one in
addition. Unless its builders were much more pachydermatous, or woolly,
than their degenerate descendants, when they chose this very drafty and
hypæthral style of architecture, they would certainly have selected a
sheltered spot on the banks of the Avon close by, where, with trees
and other devices, they might have provided some shelter from the
inclemency of the weather. They never would have erected their temples
on the highest and most exposed part of an open chalk down, where no
shelter was possible, and no service could be performed except at
irregular intervals, dependent on the weather throughout the year. As,
however, it differs not only in plan but in construction--being hewn
and having imposts--from all the rude stone circles we are acquainted
with elsewhere, no theory will be quite satisfactory that does not
account for this difference. My belief is, that this difference arises
from the fact that alone of all the monuments we know of its class,
it was erected leisurely and in time of peace by a prince retaining a
considerable admixture of Roman blood in his veins. All, or most of the
others, seem to be records of battles erected in haste by soldiers and
unskilled workmen: but of this hereafter.
Owing to its exceptional character, the usual analogies apply less
directly to Stonehenge than to almost any other monument.
[Illustration: 25. Tomb of Isidorus, at Khatoura.]
We shall be better able to judge how far those derived from India
apply, when we have described the monuments of that country. In Europe
the trilithon is certainly exceptional, and its origin not easily
traced. My own impression is, that it is only an improved dolmen,
standing on two legs instead of three, or four; but if that is so,
the intermediate steps are wanting which would enable us to connect
the two in a logical manner. They were not, however, quite unknown in
the Roman world. Several exist in Syria, for instance; three of these
are engraved in De Vogüé's work. One (the tomb of Emilius Reginus,
A.D. 195) consists of two Doric columns, with an impost;
another (woodcut No. 25) is the tomb of a certain Isidorus, and is
dated A.D. 222, and is more like our Salisbury example; both
these last-named are situated near Khatoura.[116] The bearing of such
an example as this on the question of the age of these monuments admits
of a double interpretation. According to the usual and specious mode of
reasoning, the ruder form must be the earliest, and the architectural
one copied from it. But this theory I believe to be entirely at
variance with the facts, as observed. The rudeness or elaboration of a
monument will probably be found in all instances to be an index of the
greater or less civilization of the people who erected it, but seldom
or ever a trustworthy index of time. What interests us more at present
is the knowledge that these Syrian examples are certainly sepulchral,
and their form is thus another argument in favour of the sepulchral
character of Stonehenge, if any were needed. More satisfactory than
this, however, is the testimony of Olaus Magnus, archbishop of Upsala,
quoted above.[117] He describes and figures "the most honourable
monuments of the great of his country as erected with immense stones,
and formed like great gates or trilithons" (in modum altissimæ et
latissimæ januæ sursum transversumque viribus gigantum erecta). There
is no reason for supposing that this author ever saw or even heard of
Stonehenge, yet it would be difficult to describe either the purpose or
the mode of construction of that monument more correctly than he does;
and in so far as such testimony is considered valuable, it is decisive
as to both the age and use of the monument.
Passing on from this branch of the enquiry to such local indications
as the spot affords, we find nothing very relevant or very important
either for or against our hypothesis. It has been argued, for instance,
that the number of tumuli that stud the downs within a few miles of
Stonehenge, is a proof that this temple stood there before the barrows
were erected, and that they gathered round its sacred precincts. The
first objection to this view is, that it is applying a Christian
precedent to a Pagan people. Except the Jews, who seem to have buried
their kings close to their temples,[118] I do not know of any people in
ancient or modern times except Christians who did so, and we certainly
have no hint that the ancient Britons were an exception to this
universal rule.
[Illustration: 26. Country around Stonehenge. From Ordnance Survey
maps. Scale 1 inch to 1 mile.]
Assuming, however, for the sake of argument, that this were otherwise,
we should then certainly find the barrows arranged with some reference
to Stonehenge. Either they would have gathered closely around its
precincts, or ranged in rows alongside the roads or avenues leading
to it. Nothing of the sort, however, occurs, as will be seen from the
woodcut in the following page. Within 700 yards of the monument there
is only one very insignificant group, eight in number (15 to 23 of Sir
R. Colt Hoare's plan). Beyond that they become frequent, crowning the
tops of the hills, or clustering in the hollows, but nowhere with the
least apparent reference to Stonehenge. If any one will take the
Ordnance Survey maps, or Sir R. Colt Hoare's plans, he will find the
barrows pretty evenly sown all over the surface of the plain, from
two or three miles south of Stonehenge as far as Chidbury camp, eight
miles north of it. Indeed, if Sir R. Colt Hoare's plans are to be
trusted, they were thicker at the northern end of the plain than at
the southern;[119] but as the Ordnance maps do not bear this out, it
must not be relied upon. Nowhere over this large area (say 10 miles by
5 miles) is there any trace of system as to the mode of placing these
barrows. Indeed, from Dorchester up to Swindon, over a distance of more
than seventy miles, they are scattered either singly or in groups so
completely without order, that the only feasible explanation seems to
be, that each man was buried where he lived; it may possibly have been
in his own garden, but more probably in his own house. The hut circles
of British villages are in grouping and in form so like the barrows,
that it is difficult not to suspect some connexion between them. It may
have been that when the head of a family died, he was buried on his own
hearth, and an earthen mound replaced the hut in which he lived. Be
this as it may, there is one argument that those overlook who contend
that the barrows came to Stonehenge. It is admitted that Stonehenge
belongs to the so-called Bronze age,[120] but one half of the barrows
contain only flint and stone, and consequently were there before
Stonehenge was built. Nor is it by any means the case that the nearest
it were those which contained bronze or iron, it is generally quite the
contrary; with all his knowledge, even Sir R. Colt Hoare never could
venture to predict from the locality whether the interment would be
found to belong to one class or to another, nor can we now.
One of the most direct proofs that this argument is untenable is found
in the fact, that the builders of Stonehenge had so little respect for
the graves of their predecessors, that they actually destroyed two
barrows in making the vallum round the monument. Sir R. C. Hoare found
an interment in one, and from this he adds, "we may fairly infer that
this sepulchral barrow existed on the plain, I will not venture to say
before the construction of Stonehenge, but probably before the ditch
was thrown up."[121]
It seems needless, however, to pursue the argument further. Any one who
studies carefully the Ordnance Survey sheet must, I think, perceive
that there is no connexion between the earthen and the stone monuments.
Or if this fail to convince him, if he will ride from Stonehenge over
Westdown to Chidbury camp,[122] he can hardly fail to come to the
conclusion that Stonehenge came to the barrows, not the barrows to
Stonehenge.
One other indication drawn from the barrows has been thought to throw
some light on the subject. In one of those (No. 16) near Stonehenge,
about 300 yards off, were found chippings of the same blue stones
which form the inner circle of the monuments; but there was nothing
else in this barrow to indicate its age except a spear-head of brass
in fine preservation, and a pin of the same metal, which seemed to
indicate that it belonged to the bronze age. In another (No. 22)
a pair of ivory tweezers were found. From this discovery it was
inferred, and not without some show of reason, that the barrows were
more modern than Stonehenge; and if we are to believe that all barrows
are pre-Christian, as some would try to persuade us, there is an end
of the argument. But is this so? We have just seen that the Bartlow
hills were certainly Roman. We know that the Saxons buried in hows
in the country, down at least to Hubba the Dane,[123] who was slain
in 878, and in Denmark, as we shall presently see, to a much later
period; and we do not know when the Ancient Britons ceased to use
this mode of interment. Whoever they were that built Stonehenge,
they were not Christians; or, at all events, it is certainly not a
Christian building, and we have no reason to assume that those men
who were employed on its erection, and who had for thousands of years
been burying in barrows, changed their mode of sepulture before their
conversion to Christianity. It is infinitely more probable that they
continued the practice very long afterwards; and till we can fix
some time when we feel sure that sepulture in barrows had ceased,
no argument can be drawn from this evidence. That the chief mason
of Stonehenge should be buried in his own house, or own workshop,
appears to us the most natural thing in the world; and that a village
of barrows, if I may use the expression, may be contemporary with the
monument I regard also as probable; but unless from some external
evidence we can fix their age, their existence does not seem to have
any direct bearing on the points we are now discussing.
The diggings inside the area of Stonehenge throw more light on the
subject of our enquiry than anything found outside, but even they
are not so distinct or satisfactory as might be desired. The first
exploration was undertaken by the Duke of Buckingham, and an account of
it is preserved by Aubrey. He says, "In 1620 the duke, when King James
was at Wilton, did cause the middle of Stonehenge to be digged, and
this underdigging was the cause of the falling down and recumbencie of
the great stone there," meaning evidently the great central trilithon.
In the process of digging they "found a great many bones of stagges
and oxen, charcoal, batter dashes (whatever that may mean), heads of
arrows, and some pieces of armour eaten out with rust. Bones rotten,
but whether of stagges or of men they could not tell."[124] He further
adds "that Philip Earl of Pembroke did say that an altar stone was
found in the middle of the area here, and that it was carried away to
St. James'." What this means it is not easy to discern, for Inigo Jones
distinctly describes as the altar the stone now known by that name,
which measures, as he says, 16 feet by 4. It seems impossible that any
other could have existed without his knowing it, and if it existed it
would have favoured his views too distinctly for him not to mention the
fact.
As the digging above referred to must have taken place between
what is now called the altar stone and the great trilithon, it is
of considerable interest to us. But strange to say it leaves us in
ignorance whether the bones found there were human or not; one thing,
however, seems tolerably certain, that the arrow-heads and armour were
of iron, from the state of rust they are described as being in, and
this so far is indicative of a post-Roman date.
Another curious fact is mentioned by Camden. In his plate (page 122),
half plan, half elevation--at a spot marked C outside the vallum, men
are represented as making an excavation, and the reference is "Place
where men's bones are dug up." This is of no great value in so far as
Stonehenge itself is concerned, but it is curious from its analogy with
the place where the bones were found on Hakpen Hill, and may serve as
an indication to the spot where the bones may yet be found in Avebury.
As we shall see further on, there are strong reasons for believing
that the principal interment at least was not inside the circle, but
situated externally on one side.
In more modern times, Sir R. Colt Hoare adds--"We have found, in
digging (within the circle), several fragments of Roman as well as
coarse British pottery, parts of the head and horns of deer and other
animals, and a large barbed arrow-head of iron," thus confirming what
Aubrey tells us of the Duke of Buckingham's excavation to the fullest
extent. Mr. Cunnington also dug near the altar to a depth of nearly 6
feet, and found the chalk had been moved to that depth. At about the
depth of 3 feet he found some Roman pottery. Soon after the fall of the
great trilithon, in 1797, he dug out some of the earth that had fallen
into the excavation, and "found fragments of fine black Roman pottery,
and since then another piece on the same spot."[125]
No excavation in the area has been undertaken since Sir R. Colt Hoare's
day, but as both he and Mr. Cunnington were experienced diggers, and
perfectly faithful recorders of what they found, it seems impossible
to doubt, from the finding of iron armour and Roman pottery in such
places, and at such depths that the building must have been erected
after the Romans settled in this island. As no one now will probably
be found to adopt Inigo Jones' theory that it was built by the Romans
themselves, we must look to some date after their departure to which we
may assign its erection.
* * * * *
For the written history of Stonehenge we are unfortunately forced
to rely principally on Jeffrey of Monmouth, who, though a recorder
of historical events, was also a fabulist of the most exuberant
imagination. It is consequently easy to throw discredit on his
testimony, and some consider themselves justified in putting it aside
altogether. If, however, we are to reject every mediæval author who
records miracles, or adorns his tale with fables, we may as well shut
up our books at once, and admit that, between the departure of the
Romans and the arrival of the Normans, the history of England is a mere
confused jumble, in which may be found the names of some persons and
of the battles they fought with one another, but nothing more. It is
an easy process, and may be satisfactory to some minds. The attempt
to separate the wheat from the chaff is a more tedious and laborious
task, surrounded by difficulties, and open to criticism, but it is one
that must be undertaken if truth is to be arrived at. In the present
instance the choice of difficulties seems to be clear. Either we must
reject the history of Jeffrey as entirely fabulous and unworthy of
credit, or admit his principal statement that Stonehenge was erected by
Aurelius Ambrosius as a monument to the memory of the British chiefs
treacherously slain by Hengist.
The first account we have of the event which led to its erection is
in Nennius, who lived much nearer to the time of the occurrence than
Jeffrey, who copied his narrative. It is as follows:--The Saxons having
been defeated in several actions on the coast of Kent by Vortimir,
were shut up in Thanet and forced to wait till they could summon
succour from home. When these arrived, Hengist, before attempting
open force, had recourse to stratagem, and at a feast held at the
palace or monastery at Amesbury, to which it was agreed all should
come unarmed, three hundred British nobles were treacherously slain by
the followers of Hengist, who had concealed their weapons under their
cloaks. War ensued on this, and lasted apparently for four years,
when Ambrosius, who had succeeded to Vortigern, forced the Saxons to
sue for peace.[126] That being established, Jeffrey represents him
as erecting Stonehenge by the aid of Merlin as a monument to those
who were so treacherously slain by Hengist. The massacre took place
apparently in the year 462, and the erection of Stonehenge consequently
may have been commenced about the year 466, and carried on during the
following years, say down to 470 A.D. If he had been content
to tell the story in as few words as are used here, it probably never
would have been doubted; but Merlin, in the first place, has a bad
character, for he is mixed up with the mediæval romances which made
the story of Arthur famous but fabulous, and the mode in which he
is represented by Jeffrey as bringing the stones from Ireland is
enough to induce incredulity in all sober minds.[127] As I understand
the narrative, it is this--there existed on a mountain in Ireland a
monument something like Stonehenge, which Merlin, when consulted,
advised the King to copy. This certainly is the view taken of the
matter by Geraldus Cambrensis in 1187, inasmuch as he tells us, that
in the spot referred to "similar stones, erected in a similar manner,
were to be seen in his day," though in the same sentence he tells us,
that they, or others like them, were removed to Salisbury Plain by
Merlin.[128] As he probably speaks of what he saw with his own eyes,
his words furnish tolerably clear evidence that Merlin had not removed
what still remained at Kildare so many centuries after his death. It
is also evidence, however, that the design of the monument was brought
from Ireland, and even copied from a circle, the remains of which may
probably still, if looked for, be found. So far as we know there was
nothing like Stonehenge existing in England, nor in France, in the
5th century. But, as we shall presently see, there probably may have
been in Ireland. The only trilithons I know of elsewhere are three in
a monument in the Deer Park near Sligo. They are small and simulate
portals, but they are more like Stonehenge than any else now known.
At the age we are now speaking of Ireland had contrived to nurse her
old traditions uninfluenced by Roman or foreign examples, and had
attained to that stage in art which would enable her to elaborate such
a style of architecture. While in England it is most improbable that
anything so purely original could have been elaborated during the Roman
occupation of the island. Still a monument like this must have had a
prototype, and unless we can prove its existence here before Cæsar's
time, it is to Ireland or some foreign country that we must look
for the model that suggested the design. But, after all, are we not
fighting with a shadow? May it not be that the tradition of a monument
being brought from Ireland applies only to the blue stones? I have been
assured by competent geologists, though I have not seen the fact stated
in any form I can quote, that these belong to rocks not found in Great
Britain, but which are common in Ireland. If this is so, there would
be no greater difficulty in bringing them from the Sister Island than
from Wales or Cornwall. Once on board ship the difference of distance
is nothing. If they did come from Ireland nothing is more likely than
that, after a lapse of eight or ten centuries, the facts belonging
really only to a part should be applied to the whole; and in that case
the aid of Merlin or of some equally powerful magician would certainly
have become indispensable. In that age, at least, I do not know any
other agency that could have accomplished the transference, and I am
not at all surprised, under the circumstances, that Jeffrey arrived at
the same conclusion.
The true explanation of the mystery seems to be, that the design of
Stonehenge may have come from Ireland, the native style of art having
been in abeyance in England during the Roman occupation, and that the
blue stones most probably came from the Sister Island, which is quite
enough to account for the Merlin myth; but of all this we shall be
better able to judge when we have discussed the Irish antiquities of
the same age.
To return to our history, however, a little further on Jeffrey asserts
that Aurelius himself was buried "near the convent of Ambrius within
the Giant's Dance (chorea gigantum), which in his lifetime he had
commanded to be made."[129] As far as it goes, this is a distinct
assertion that the place was used for burial, otherwise from the
context we would gather that the Britons slain by Hengist were buried
in the cemetery attached to the monastery, and that Stonehenge was
consequently a cenotaph and not a monument. But again, in recording
the life of Constantine, the nephew and successor of Arthur, after
relating how he defeated the Saxons and took vengeance on the nephews
of Mordred, he goes on to say--"Three years after this he was killed
by Conan, and buried close to Uther Pendragon, within the structure of
stones which was set up with wonderful art, not far from Salisbury,
and called in the English tongue Stonehenge."[130] This last event,
though no date is given, must have occurred some time between 546, or
four years after Arthur's death, and 552, the date of the battle of
Banbury Hill, where Conan his successor commanded. Assuming for the
moment that this may be the case, may it not suffice to explain one of
the mysteries of Stonehenge, the presence of the pairs of blue stones
inside the choir? Why may we not suppose that these were erected in
memory of the kings or others who were buried in front of them? Why
may not Aurelius and Constantine have been buried in front of the two
small pairs at either end of the so-called altar stone? If this were
so, and it appears to me extremely probable that it was, the last
remains of the mist that hangs over the uses of this monument would be
dispersed.
From the time of Jeffrey (1147) all subsequent mediæval historians
adopt the account of these events given by him, with occasional but
generally slight variations, and even modern critics are inclined to
accept his account of Constantine and Conan, as his narrative can
be checked by that of Gildas, who was cotemporary with these kings.
Similar statements are also found in the triads of the Welsh bards,
which some contend are original and independent authorities.[131]
My own impression is that they may be so, but I do not think their
independence has been so clearly established as to enable us to found
any argument upon it. On the other hand, the incidental allusion of
Jeffrey to the erection of Stonehenge as a cenotaph to the slain
nobles, and the subsequent burial there of the two kings, seems so
likely and natural that it is difficult to see why they should be
considered as inventions. The two last-named events, at all events, do
not add to the greatness or wonder of the kings, or of his narrative,
and are not such things as would be inserted in the page of history,
unless they were currently known, or were recorded somewhere in some
writing to which the historian had access.
Before quitting Stonehenge there is one other antiquity connected with
it, regarding which it is necessary to say a few words. Both in Sir R.
Colt Hoare's plan and the Ordnance Survey, there are marked two oblong
enclosures called the greater and lesser "Cursus," and along which
the antiquaries of the last century amused themselves by picturing
the chariot races of the Ancient Britons, though as they ascribed the
introduction of races to the Romans, they admitted that they must have
been formed after the subjection of the island by that people.[132] The
greater cursus is about a mile and three-quarters long, by 110 yards
wide. The smaller is so indistinct that only its commencement can be
identified; but even as concerns the larger, I walked twice across it
without perceiving its existence, though I was looking for it, and no
one I fancy would remark it if his attention were not turned to it.
Its boundary mounds never could have been 3 feet high, and now in many
places are very nearly obliterated.
That these alignments were once race-courses, appears to me one of the
most improbable of the various conjectures which have been hazarded
with regard even to Stonehenge. No Roman race-course, that we know
of, omitted to provide for the horses returning at least once past
the place they started from, and no course was even a mile, much less
a mile and three-quarters long. What sort of horse-races the British
indulged in before the Conquest I don't know, nor will I hazard an
opinion on the subject; but if they wanted the races to be seen, there
are several beautiful and appropriate spots close at hand where they
could have laid out a longer course along one of the bottoms, where
tens of thousands might conveniently have witnessed the sport from
the sloping banks on either hand, whereas here only the front rank
could have seen the race at all, and that imperfectly. It may also be
remarked that the east end of the cursus is closed by a mound which
must have been a singularly awkward position for the judges, though
that is the place assigned to them by Sir Richard; and the west end is
cut off also by an embankment, behind which are several tumuli on the
course, which seems a very unlikely racing arrangement.
But if not race-courses, what were they? If any one will turn back
to woodcut No. 12, p. 55, representing the alignments at Merivale
bridge, and compare them with the cursus as shown in woodcut No. 26,
p. 102, representing the ground about Stonehenge, I think he must
perceive that the two cursus, if complete, would occupy exactly the
same relative position with regard to Stonehenge--on a much larger
scale of course--as those at Dartmoor do to the circle there. The
arrangements are so similar that the purposes can hardly be different.
At first sight this seems to tell against the battle theory. We know
of no battle fought on Salisbury Plain. This, however, is the merest
negative assumption possible. We know that the massacre at Amesbury was
followed by a four years' war, between Ambrosius and the Saxons.[133]
Battles there must have been, and many, and what so likely as that the
crowning victory should have been fought in the immediate proximity of
the capital of one of the contending parties. If these cursus do mark
the battle-field, it will at once account for the somewhat anomalous
position of Stonehenge. What is so likely as that the victor should
have chosen the field of his final victory to erect there a monument
to the memory of those whose treacherous slaughter had been the cause
of the war? Of course this is only an hypothesis, and it is only put
forward as such, but it seems to me infinitely nearer the truth than
that of the gratuitous suggestion of a race-course, and looks like one
of the coincidences sure to occur when the investigation is on the
right path towards the true solution.
* * * * *
The first impression that the narrative of the preceding pages will
convey to most readers, will probably be that there must be something
more to be said on the subject, or that something important is left
out. If, it may be argued, the case is so clear as here stated, it
could never have been doubted, and must have been accepted long ago.
All I can say in answer is, that if anything is omitted I am not aware
of it. Everything I know of has been stated as fully and as fairly as
seemed necessary for its being clearly understood. In this instance it
must be remembered that the usual arguments drawn from the division
into stone, bronze, and iron ages hardly come into play. Nothing has
been found inside Stonehenge but iron and Roman pottery. Even admitting
the barrows in the immediate proximity of Stonehenge to be coeval,
before their testimony can be of any avail, it must be ascertained when
men ceased to be buried in barrows, and when a man might not wish a
bronze spear-head to be entombed with him as a relic, even if he did
not fight with it in his lifetime. Even then, however, the evidence
would be too indistinct to outweigh that of the finds inside the circle.
If, after what has been said above, any one still maintains that
Stonehenge is a temple, and not sepulchral, we have no common ground
from which to reason, and need not attempt it. Or if any one as
familiar with the locality as I am personally, or who has studied the
Ordnance maps with the same care, likes to argue that the barrows came
to Stonehenge, and not Stonehenge to the barrows, we see things with
such different eyes that we equally want a common basis for argument.
In a case like the present, however, the great difficulty to be
overcome is not so much cool argument and close reasoning, as a certain
undefined feeling that a monument must be old because we know so little
about it. "Omne ignotum pro antiquo" is a matter of faith with many
who will listen to no argument to the contrary, and in the case of
Stonehenge the false notion has been so fostered by nearly all those
who have written about it since the time of James I., that it will be
very difficult now to overthrow it. Those who adhere to it, however,
hardly realize how dark the ages were between the departure of the
Romans and the time of Alfred the Great, and how much may have been
done in that time without any record of it coming down to our day. Even
if we give them all the megalithic monuments we possess, it is very
little indeed for so large a population in so long a time.
Even at a much later period of English history than we are now occupied
with, it is wonderful how little we should know of our monuments if we
depended on the "litera scripta" for our information. Any one who is
familiar with the guide-books of the last, or beginning of the present
century, will see what dire confusion of dates existed with regard to
the erection of our greatest cathedrals and mediæval monuments. Saxon
and Norman were confounded everywhere, and the distinction of any of
the styles between Early English and Perpendicular was not appreciated,
and frequently the dates were reversed. In fact, it was not till
Rickman took the matter in hand that order emerged out of chaos, and he
succeeded because his constructive knowledge enabled him to perceive
progressive developments which formed true sequences, and he was thus
able to supply the want of written information. Every tyro now can fix
a date to every moulding in any of our mediæval buildings, but if we
had only written history to depend upon, in nine cases out of ten he
could not prove that the building was not erected by the Romans or the
Phœnicians, or anybody else. If this is the case in an age when
writing was so common as between the Conquest and the Reformation,
should we be surprised if we find matters so much darker between the
departure of the Romans and Alfred, when written history hardly helps
us at all? But Rickman's method will, when applied to Stonehenge and
similar monuments, if I am not very much mistaken, render their dates
nearly as clear as those of our mediæval monuments have been rendered
by the same method.
None but those who have had occasion specially to study the subject
can be aware how devoid of all literary records the period is of
which we are now treating. So meagre and so scarce are they, that
many well-informed persons doubt whether such a person as King Arthur
ever lived; and scarcely one of his great actions is established by
anything like satisfactory contemporary testimony. Yet, in all ages,
and in all countries where histories either written or oral exist, they
are filled with the exploits of favourite national heroes--as Arthur
was--which, even where they are fullest and most diffuse, it is the
rarest possible thing to find in them a record of the building of any
temple or tomb. From the building of the Parthenon to the completion
of Henry VIII.'s Chapel, the notices of buildings in general histories
are as few and meagre as may be, and are comprised in a few paragraphs
scattered through many hundred volumes. No one, I am convinced, who
has thought twice on the subject, would expect to find any notice of
buildings in the few pages which are all we possess of history between
the departure of the Romans and the time of the Venerable Bede; yet the
absence of record is the argument which, if I am not mistaken, has had
more influence on the popular mind than almost any other. Too generally
it is assumed that, as we know nothing about them, they must be old. To
me, on the contrary, nothing appears so extremely improbable as that
the builders, while leaving no record of their exploits, should have
left any written account of the erection of the Rude Stone Monuments.
One other point seems worth alluding to before concluding this chapter,
which is that nothing has been advanced, so far as I know, that would
lead us to suppose that the people of this island were, before the time
of the Romans, either more numerous or more powerful, and consequently
more capable of erecting such monuments as Stonehenge and Avebury,
than they were after that people had resided for four centuries among
them. All our existing knowledge seems to tend to a diametrically
opposite conclusion, and now that the day for vague declamation and _à
priori_ reasoning is past, if any proof to the contrary can be brought
forward, it would be well that it were now adduced, for otherwise
judgment may go by default. If we mistake not, the case must be strong
and clear that is to outweigh the evidence just brought forward in
reference to the two monuments the use and age of which we have just
been discussing.
[Footnote 77: These particulars are taken from a careful survey
made by Sir R. Colt Hoare, in 1812, and published in his 'Ancient
Wilts,' vol. ii. pl. xiii. p. 70 _et seq._]
[Footnote 78: 'Stonehenge and Avebury,' p. 34.]
[Footnote 79: Haca, or Haco, according to Kemble, was some mythical
person with a very Danish name which is found in Hampshire and
Berkshire, as well as here. Pen seems to mean merely enclosure, as
it does now in English. See Kemble, in 'Journal Arch. Inst.' xiv.
p. 134.]
[Footnote 80: 'Bell. Gall.' vi. 17.]
[Footnote 81: 'Sculptured Stones of Scotland,' ii. p. xli.]
[Footnote 82: Thurnam, 'Crania Britannica;' London, 1856 to 1865.]
[Footnote 83: 'Codex diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici,' v. p. 238, No.
1120.]
[Footnote 84: Stukeley, 'Stonehenge and Abury,' p. 27.]
[Footnote 85: The particulars are taken from a pamphlet entitled
'Excavations at Avebury, under the direction of the Secretary of
the Wiltshire Archæol. and Nat. Hist. Society,' printed at Devizes,
but, so far as I know, not yet published.]
[Footnote 86: 'Sculptured Stones of Scotland,' vol. i. introd. p.
xx.]
[Footnote 87: A plan of it was published about Stukeley's time by
a Mr. Twining, in a pamphlet, which was written to prove that this
group of monuments was erected by Agricola, to represent a map of
England! A plan accompanies it, which shows all the avenues as
straight; but what weight can possibly be attached to any evidence
coming from a man with such a theory as this?]
[Footnote 88: 'Ancient Wiltshire,' ii. p. 63.]
[Footnote 89: Camden, 'Britannia,' 127.]
[Footnote 90: 'Archæologia,' xxviii. p. 399 _et seq._]
[Footnote 91: 'Journal Wiltshire Archæol. and Nat. Hist. Society,'
vii. p. 1861.]
[Footnote 92: Curiously enough these dimensions are almost
identical with those of the mound erected by the Belgic-Dutch, to
commemorate the part they did not take in the battle of Waterloo.
Its dimensions are 130 feet high, 544 feet in diameter, and 1632
feet in circumference. The angle of the slope of the sides is
lower, being 27½ degrees, owing to the smaller diameter of the
flat top, which is only 40 feet.]
[Footnote 93: Douglas, 'Nenia Brit.' p. 161. See also Salisbury
volume of the Archæological Institute, p. 74.]
[Footnote 94: 'Journal Royal Asiatic Soc.' xiii. p. 164; and Major
Skinner's plan of Anurajapura.]
[Footnote 95: Wilson, 'Ariana Antiqua,' p. 41; and Masson's
'Memoir,' _passim_.]
[Footnote 96: Sir R. C. Hoare, 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. pl. ii. fig.
8.]
[Footnote 97: Ibid. i. p. 191.]
[Footnote 98: 'Archæologia,' xxx. p. 300 _et seq._]
[Footnote 99: 'Arch. Journ.,' xxiv. pp. 92 and 319.]
[Footnote 100: Ibid. p. 100.]
[Footnote 101: 'Ancient Wiltshire,' ii. 5. Unfortunately there
is no scale attached to the plan of the Marden Circle, and no
dimensions quoted in the text.]
[Footnote 102: 'Ancient Wiltshire,' p. 7.]
[Footnote 103: I adopt Dr. Guest's dates for this part of the
subject, not only because I think them most probable, but because I
think, from his knowledge and the special attention he has bestowed
on the subject, he is most likely to be right. See _Salisbury
Volume Arch. Journal_, p. 62.]
[Footnote 104: 'Athenæum Journal,' Dec. 13, 1865.]
[Footnote 105: 'Mon. Brit.' p. 15.]
[Footnote 106: 'Salisbury Vol.' p. 63.]
[Footnote 107: 'Mon. Brit.' p. 15.]
[Footnote 108: Colt Hoare, 'Ancient Wiltshire,' ii. p. 22.]
[Footnote 109: Saxon Chronicle, in 'Mon. Brit.' p. 304.]
[Footnote 110: 'Jeffrey of Monmouth,' ix. p. 4.]
[Footnote 111: The history of the plan given on page 92, and from
which all the dimensions in the text are quoted, is this. When I
was staying with my friend, Mr. Hawkshaw, the eminent engineer,
at Eversley, I was complaining of the incorrectness of all the
published plans, when he said, "I have a man in my office whose
plans are the very essence of minute accuracy. I will send him
down to make one for you." He did so, and his plan--to a scale of
10 feet to 1 inch, is before me. I afterwards took this plan to
Stonehenge, and identified the position and character of every
stone marked upon it.]
[Footnote 112: I am almost afraid to allude to it even in a note,
lest some one should accuse me of founding any theory upon it,
like Piazzi Smyth's British inches in the Pyramids, but it is a
curious coincidence that nearly all the British circles are set
out in two dimensions. The smaller class are 100 feet, the larger
are 100 metres in diameter. They are all more than 100 yards. The
latter measure is at all events certainly accidental, so far as
we at present know, but as a nomenclature and "memoria technica,"
the employment of the terms may be useful, provided it is clearly
understood that no theory is based upon it.]
[Footnote 113: 'Historia,' in 'Mon. Brit.' 694.]
[Footnote 114: 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' by the author, plates
iii. _et seq._]
[Footnote 115: Twenty Chinese coolies would carry any one of them
up in a week.]
[Footnote 116: 'Serie Centrale' by Comte Melchior de Vogüé. Though
this work was commenced some ten years ago, and subscriptions
obtained, it is still incomplete. No text has yet been published,
and no maps, which makes the identification of the places
singularly difficult.]
[Footnote 117: Vide _ante_, footnote, p. 15.]
[Footnote 118: 'Topography of Jerusalem,' by the Author, p. 58.]
[Footnote 119: 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 178, plan vi.]
[Footnote 120: Sir John Lubbock, 'Prehistoric Times,' p. 116.]
[Footnote 121: Sir R. Colt Hoare, 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 145.]
[Footnote 122: The name is written as Sidbury in the Ordnance maps.]
[Footnote 123: 'Archæologia,' vii. pp. 132-134.]
[Footnote 124: 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 154.]
[Footnote 125: 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 150.]
[Footnote 126: Nennius, in 'Mon. Brit.' p. 69.]
[Footnote 127: Jeffrey, viii. c. 9.]
[Footnote 128: "Fuit antiquis temporibus in Hiberniâ lapidum
congeries admiranda, quæ et Chorea gigantum dicta fuit, quia
gigantes eam ab ultimis Africæ partibus in Hiberniam attulerunt et
in Kildarienes planicie non procul a Castro Nasensi, tam ingenii
quam virium opere mirabiliter erexerunt. Unde et ibidem lapides
quidam aliis simillimi similique modo erecti usque in hodiernum
conspiciuntur. Mirum qualiter tanti lapides tot etiam et tam magni
unquam in unum locum vel congesti fuerint vel erecti: quantoque
artificiis lapidibus tam magnis et altis alii superpositi sint
non minores; qui sic in pendulo et tanquam in inani suspendi
videntur ut potius artificum studio quam suppositorum podio
inniti videantur. Juxta Britannicam historiam lapides istos rex
Britonum Aurelius Ambrosius divina Merlini diligentia de Hiberniâ
in Britanniam advehi procuravit; et ut tanti facinoris egregium
aliquod memoriale relinqueret eodem ordine et arte qua prius in
loco constituit ubi occultis Saxonum cultris Britanniæ flos occidit
et sub pacis obtentu nequitiæ telis male tecta regni juventus
occubuit."--_Topogr. Hiberniæ_, vol. ii. ch. xviii.
If we could trust Ware, they still existed in the beginning of
the last century. He speaks of "Saxa illæ in gentia et rudia
quæ in planitie non longe a Naasa in agro Kildariensi et alibi
visuntur."--_Hist. Hib._, xxiv. 103.]
[Footnote 129: 'Hist. Brit.' viii. ch. xvi.]
[Footnote 130: 'Hist. Brit.' xi. ch. iv.]
[Footnote 131: This is the principal argument of Herbert's 'Cyclops
Christianus.']
[Footnote 132: 'Ancient Wiltshire,' i. p. 158. See also woodcut No.
26, p. 102. The dotted part of the smaller cursus is a restoration
of my own.]
[Footnote 133: _Vide ante_, p. 107.]