AVEBURY, AllURY, or A'BIRY, a small village of Wiltshire, situated in n. lat. 51° 25', and w. long,1° 50'. 25 m. n. of Salisbury, and 6 w. by n. of Marlborough. It is a place of no importance in itself, having a pop. of 769; but it is remarkable as the site of the largest so-called Druidical temple in Europe—in fact. occupying the most of the sacred inclosure itself—and as having in its neighborhood several remarkable barrows and cromlechs of remote antiquity.
What is called the temple occupies a fiat area of ground oil the s. of the Rennet, a diminutive.trIbutary of.the Thames. It consists, or rather consisted, of a hundred large blocks of stone, placed on end in a circular form, around a level area of about 470 yards in diameter, bounded by a deep ditch and a high embankment forming the inclosure. There are also the remains of two small circles of stones within the inclosure, supposed to be inner temples. Of these, one consisted of two concentric circles of 43 upright stones, having a single stone near the center; the other, a similar double circle of 45 stone's, to the n.w. of the former, with three large. and high blocks in -the center. The stones that remain of this ancient work arc not of uniform size; they measure from 5 to 20 ft. in height above the ground, and from 3 to 12 in breadth and thickness.
The embankment, which is broken down in several places, bad originally two entrances to the temple, eastward and westward, from which issue two long walks, bending round to the southward, each furnished with a range of blocks on either side similar to those of the temple itself. These avenues are each upwards of a mile in length, the width varying from 56 to 35 feet. .That which issues to the c., or rather s.e., after turning south ward, bends near its extremity to the s.e. again, and closes on a knoll called Overton hill in two concentric oval ranges of blocks. That which issues to the w. also bends to the s., and then to s.w., endieg in a point with a single block.
Of the surrounding antiquities, that which appears most closely connected with the temple is a large barrow, or lofty conical mound, called Silbury hill, lying due s. of it, at a distance of three quarters of a mile. It is situated nearly midway between the two avenues, in the line of the ancient Roman road between London and Bath. Close to the
base, it measures 2027 ft. in circumference; the sloping height is 316 ft.; the perpendicu lar height, 170 ft. ; the diameter of the level area at the top, 120 ft.; the space covered by the whole work, over 5 acres. What proves the structure to have been more ancient than the time of the Romans, if such proof were necessary, is that the Roman road, as it comes from the w., is straight for several miles till it reaches Silbury, when it bends round it to the s., and again proceeds in a direct line to Marlborough.
About a mile n. of A. there are remains of a large cromlech, the stones of which have been overturned; and about 3 m. e. there is another, which has two upright blocks stand ing apart, with a larger one surmounting them. In the neighborhood, all round the Marlborough downs, there arc remains of earthworks and upright stones, and the sites of other antiquities now nearly obliterated.
Very little was known of A. and the antiquities in its vicinity till the year 1740, when Dr. Stukeley, a somewhat fanciful antiquary, published his work, Stonehenge and Abury, Tic() Temple's Restored to theBritish, Druids; although Aubrey, an ardent student of antiquarian lore, bad written an account of them in 1663, by command of Charles II., the manuscript of which still exists. None of the earlier topographers or antiquaries appear to have left any description of them. When Sir Richard Iloare, in collecting materials for his Ancient Wiltshire, made his examination of them in years after the appearance of Stukeley's work, and 164 after the first survey by Aubrey, a great number of the stones had disappeared, and in many places it was difficult to trace out even the plan of the works. In 1849, in order to satisfy the curiosity of the lovers of antiquity as to the nature and intention of the great barrow, Silbury hill, a tunnel was cut to Its center, but nothing was discovered to throw light on the subject. Some modern archeologists altogether reject the conclusions of Stukeley and his follow ers, and call for proof of any connection between the Druids and the stone circles which it has been the fashion for the last century to call Druidical.