The History of Avebury
Avebury has been built, abandoned, buried, broken up, surveyed, bought with marmalade money and reconstructed. The monument you walk into is the result of all of it.
2850 to 2200 BC — the four centuries of building
English Heritage dates the henge and its stone circles to roughly 2850–2200 BC. It was not one project. The evidence points to a sequence: a central setting first, then the inner circles, then the vast outer circle and the earthwork, then the avenues running out across the downs.
That is six centuries of intermittent work by communities who left no writing and no settlement inside the henge. West Kennet Long Barrow, a mile south, was already a thousand years old when the first Avebury stone went up.
What the builders left, and what they did not
They left an earthwork, around a hundred sarsens, two smaller circles, at least two avenues and, a mile away, the largest artificial mound in Europe. They left antler picks in the ditch and pottery in the ditch fill.
They left no burials inside the circle, no temple, no inscription and no explanation. Every account of what Avebury was for is inference, and the honest guides say so. What survives above ground is set out stone by stone on the stones of Avebury, and the monuments beyond the bank on things to do at Avebury.
John Aubrey, 1649 and 1663
The antiquary John Aubrey rode into the stones while out hunting in 1649 and recognised what he was looking at. In September 1663 he came back to make a systematic study, and the plan he produced is still used by archaeologists.
Aubrey's plan matters because it records stones that no longer exist. Much of what is known about the southern inner circle comes from a drawing made before it was destroyed.
William Stukeley, 1719 to 1724 — a survey made during the destruction
William Stukeley surveyed Avebury across the summers of 1719 to 1724 and watched the monument being dismantled while he worked. His notebooks record stones standing one season and gone the next.
He also recorded Beckhampton Avenue, running west from the henge, and was disbelieved for the best part of three centuries until excavation in the 1990s showed he had been right. Stukeley's reputation as a fantasist cost archaeology two hundred years on that point.
Burning, breaking and burying — the stones the village removed
From at least the 1700s the villagers took the circle apart for building stone and farmland. The method was to light a fire against a stone, douse it with cold water to crack it, and finish the job with a sledgehammer.
Earlier still, in the fourteenth century, stones were being toppled into pits and buried rather than broken. That is how the Barber Surgeon Stone came to have a body under it, with coins of 1320–25 in his purse. By 1939 only nine stones of the outer circle were still standing and ten more lay fallen — the full account is on the stones of Avebury.
Alexander Keiller, 1924 to 1939 — marmalade money and a reconstruction
Alexander Keiller, heir to the Dundee marmalade firm, bought much of Avebury between 1924 and 1939 and turned his fortune on it. He excavated West Kennet Avenue in 1934–35 and the henge itself from 1937 to 1939.
His method was to find the buried and fallen stones, re-erect them where the sockets proved their position, and set a concrete marker wherever the stone was gone entirely. He opened his museum in 1938. The circle that photographs so well today is substantially his work, and the plinths are his signature.
From Keiller's estate to the National Trust and a World Heritage Site
The estate passed to the National Trust, which manages the henge and stone circles on behalf of English Heritage; the two bodies share the cost. In 1986 Avebury was inscribed by UNESCO together with Stonehenge as a single World Heritage Site.
None of that changed the essential thing about it. There is still no gate, still no ticket and still a village, a pub and two public roads inside the bank — which is why a visit here feels nothing like a visit to its more famous neighbour. If you would rather hear all this on site than read it, Avebury Tours compares the guided days, and two of them put a working archaeologist in the car on an Avebury and Stonehenge tour.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 3650 BC | West Kennet Long Barrow built, a thousand years before the henge |
| c. 2850–2200 BC | The henge, the stone circles and the avenues raised |
| c. 2400 BC | Silbury Hill completed |
| c. 1320–25 | Stones toppled and buried; the Barber Surgeon dies under one |
| 1649, 1663 | John Aubrey finds and then surveys the site |
| 1719–1724 | William Stukeley surveys it during the destruction |
| 1700s onward | Stones burned, split and carted away for building |
| 1908–1922 | Harold St George Gray excavates the ditch |
| 1924–1939 | Alexander Keiller buys, excavates and re-erects |
| 1938 | The Alexander Keiller Museum opens |
| 1986 | Inscribed by UNESCO with Stonehenge |
See it with someone who knows the sequence
Two operators put a working archaeologist in the car. Compare what each guided day covers before you book.
Sources
Checked on 5 September 2026. Hours and prices are the operators' and the National Trust's own, and they change — the official pages are the place to confirm before you travel.