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The New Inn B and B  Winterbourne Monkton Avebury,
Wiltshire, SN4 9NW. England
Proprietors Geraldine & Sarah

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Avebury History

By John Chandler

Like Nell Gwyn, Avebury entered the pages of history as a result of catching the king’s eye. ‘They told his Majestie,’ wrote John Aubrey with evident pride, ‘what they had heard me say concerning Aubury: that it did as much excell Stoneheng as a Cathedral does a Parish Church.’ So it was that in 1663 Aubrey had the honour of conducting Charles II around ‘that stupendous antiquity’, and of climbing with his majesty to the top of Silbury Hill. Aubrey was no fool; his well-chosen simile conveys not only the scale and grandeur of Avebury, but also a sense of religious awe. And it is this response by one generation after another to the religions and traditions of the past that has been central to Avebury’s history – whether manifesting itself as Bronze Age barrows built inside the Neolithic enclosure at Windmill Hill, or a Viking funeral at Silbury Hill, or a 14th-century attempt to conceal the standing stones by burying them in pits, or the all-pervasive Druids of Stukeley’s antiquarian imagination, or the crowds of present-day visitors who brave the main road to touch the stones – you and me.

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