From the oldest things there is always something new. Stonehenge seemed asleep for ever, when, lo! a little prodding by Colonel Hawley and Mr. R. S. Newall revealed three, and perhaps four, circles of empty holes surrounding the stones themselves. Air photographs have now revealed another startling fact, unverified until this month. Let me explain.
From the entrance of Stonehenge there run north-eastwards two parallel banks, seventy feet apart. These two banks are known as the Avenue, and many untenable hypotheses have been founded upon them. At a distance of 726 yards from the centre of Stonehenge, at the bottom of the valley, the Avenue divides; one branch runs due north to the Cursus; the other, with which we are now concerned, was lost, but its course was visible a century ago, and was mapped by Sir Richard Colt Hoare in 1811, and by the Ordnance Survey in 1817. It ran due east for 860 yards to the top of the hill, where it was lost in ploughed land between two groups of barrows called (by “the imaginative Stukeley”) the Old and New King Barrows. Beyond this no one has ever seen a trace of it. Stukeley, in 1723, thought it continued straight on to “an ancient ford of the river Avon,” i.e., Ratlyn.
Its real course is plainly visible on air photos taken in July, 1921—a most favourable time, because so dry. The Avenue appears as a pair of thin parallel white lines; it bends sharply south-eastward, and then after a straight run of just over half a mile, terminates abruptly (in the hamlet of West Amesbury), on the banks of the Avon. All this is absolutely new and was never before suspected; and there can be no reasonable doubt that it is correct.
Personally, I feel quite certain that the marks on the air-photos are those of the Avenue banks; but I do not expect all others to be convinced until trenches have been dug across to prove it. I have just returned from walking, with another archæologist, along the whole length of the Avenue. We could not see the faintest trace on the surface until we had got a mile beyond West Amesbury. But here, between the Old and New King Barrows, there is a bank in a field-track exactly at the point where Stukeley’s measurements placed the Avenue, and where one of the two parallel lines on the air-photo comes out. Here, about a mile from Stonehenge, I picked up a piece of “blue” stone. We could see a double line in a field of potatoes quite plainly—apparently the deeper soil of the silted-up flanking ditches promotes better growth—and also where the two branches meet. The utter absence of other surface indications where the lines appear on the air-photo is remarkable; but in some ways not unwelcome; so much greater will be the triumph of air-photography if digging reveals the flanking ditches beside the banks there. I intend to make this crucial test shortly, if the owners’ permission can be obtained.
What does this discovery mean? In the first place it puts out of court once and for all the fanciful astronomical theories of the late Sir Norman Lockyer and others. An avenue which splits into two branches, one leading to a race course and the other to a river (and neither branch straight) cannot be regarded as oriented to the rising sun for purposes of worship; and no serious archæologist of repute ever supposed it could. On the other hand, the suggestion of Professor Schuchhardt, that the Avenue was a Sacred Way along which processions led to the Cursus on the one hand (and to a settlement on the other) is strongly reinforced. The Cursus, according to him, was a prehistoric stadium; it is about two miles long, and he believes that chariot races and funeral games were held there periodically in honour of a dead hero buried in Stonehenge. What more natural than that a ceremonial way should lead from the one to the other?
But what was the purpose of the newly-discovered southern branch of the Avenue? Schuchhardt suggested that it might lead to Durrington Walls, a remarkable camp (?), with the ditch on its inner side. He believed this earthwork to be the settlement where the Stonehenge people lived. That is still quite possible; it is, indeed, probable that Durrington Walls, whether a settlement or not, belongs to the same early period as Stonehenge. But we now know, thanks to air-photography, that this branch led elsewhere. Now, there are two points worth noticing about the new course revealed: (1) It does not take the most direct route from the Avon to Stonehenge, but the one which has the easiest gradient. (Actually the total length of the Avenue is 1 mile 1,310 yards, and the distance in a straight line is 1 mile 550 yards. The direct route would involve crossing at least one additional valley.) And (2) itCut off in cuttings book terminates on the river, at the point where the river is nearest to Stonehenge.
I suggest that this branch of the Avenue was the ceremonial way along which the stones of Stonehenge itself were transported. We now know for certain that the blue or “foreign” stones were brought here by human agency from the neighbourhood of the Prescelly Hills in Pembrokeshire. Expert microscopic examination has proved this beyond any reasonable doubt. It remains uncertain, however, whether they were transported by sea or land. Dr. Thomas, whose examination of the stones has led to the knowledge of their source, decides tentatively in favour of a land route, mainly because a sea route would be hazardous and difficult. But I think he underestimates the sea-going powers of our prehistoric ancestors. In the Early Bronze Age gold objects from Ireland reached Wiltshire, for several of them have been found in the barrows there; beads, gold mountings for knifehandles and for buttons, and other objects were particularly abundant in the barrows immediately round Stonehenge. Some were also found in a barrow at Hengistbury, the natural port of Salisbury Plain, at the mouth of the Avon. They have been found in Dorset (in barrows near the coast), and in Cornwall. Such would be the natural distribution to expect if they were obtained from traders by sea from Ireland. There is no evidence of any such finds along a land route, which, too, would be a most difficult one in those days. Dr. Thomas himself suggests that the port of Milford Haven was used, since the Altar Stone at Stonehenge is formed of a rock which occurs only in that corner of Wales. We know that the Scandinavians of those days had good ships, for they have left pictures of them carved indelibly upon the rocks of Bohuslan. Why not also the people of these islands?
There is one possible objection to this theory. Was the Avon deep enough then to float a raft carrying a stone over two tons in weight? If it was not, the theory of flotation from Hengistbury up the Avon must be abandoned. It is not a new one; but the new discovery of the Avenue’s terminus makes it worth re-examining. Perhaps some engineer will work out the depth necessary.
The conclusions of Dr. Thomas give a remarkable confirmation to the tradition recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century, that Stonehenge was brought by Merlin from Ireland, and set up again as a war memorial. Dr. Thomas suggests that the extreme west of Wales might well be confused with Ireland, especially if there was any racial connection between the inhabitants of each (and there certainly was). I would add that the confusion is the more likely if the journey was made by sea. Further, the only monument at all comparable to Stonehenge (though less advanced)—Cerig-y-gof—is near Newport in Pembrokeshire. Doubtless the motive in transporting the stones was a religious one. If they had been set up in their Welsh home as a sacred circle of stones, they would certainly have great magical value. This, indeed, is the only conceivable reason for carrying them off.
Source info: Checked in library.
In the cuttings book, (1) the third column of this article is on the back of the first, and therefore not visible in the scanned image; (2) the first line of the third column has been cut off, and is here supplied from a library copy.