Avebury Map and Site Layout

Most people arrive at Avebury expecting one circle in one field and find a village, two main roads and a monument they are already standing inside. This page is the orientation nobody hands you at the car park.

Why Avebury needs a map and Stonehenge does not

Stonehenge is a single setting you walk around on a marked path, and you can see all of it from any point. Avebury is 347 metres across with a bank high enough to hide the far side, quartered by two public roads and with a village in the middle.

The result is that visitors routinely walk one quadrant, decide they have seen it and leave. Travellers say as much in their own reviews — one asked for a map of the paths in so many words. Twenty minutes of orientation roughly doubles what an hour at Avebury gets you.

The henge in plan — bank, ditch, four quadrants, two roads

Picture a ring. The outermost element is the bank; inside it is the ditch; inside that stands the outer circle of sarsens. The A4361 runs north–south through the henge and the Swindon–Devizes road crosses it east–west, cutting the interior into four unequal quadrants.

There are four original entrances, at roughly north, south, east and west. The south-east one is where West Kennet Avenue leaves. Everything inside is open to walk on; the field boundaries are stock fences, not exclusions.

Where the car park is, and the walk from it

The National Trust car park sits outside the henge, south of the village off the A4361 at SN8 1RF. That is deliberate: you approach the monument on foot rather than parking in it. From the car park it is a few minutes' walk north to the southern quadrants.

The museum, the manor, the shop, the café and the Red Lion are all clustered in the village at the centre. If you only do one loop, walk out of the car park, up onto the bank, and follow it clockwise.

The two inner circles, the Cove and the Obelisk

The northern inner circle sits in the north-east quadrant, about 98 metres across, with the two surviving Cove stones at its centre. The southern inner circle occupied the south-east quadrant, about 108 metres across, and the position of its central Obelisk is marked in the turf.

Both are inside the outer ring, and both are easy to walk past without registering them as separate monuments. Knowing that there are three concentric things and not one is most of the battle.

The wider landscape — two miles, five monuments

Everything on that table is free to enter. All of it is described on things to do at Avebury, and the parking notes matter: the lay-bys are small, and West Kennet Long Barrow needs proper shoes because reaching it means half a mile uphill across a field.

A walking route that takes in everything

From the car park, go up onto the bank and follow it clockwise through all four quadrants, dropping into the north-east to stand between the Cove stones. Come back through the village for the museum, then leave by the south-east entrance and walk out along West Kennet Avenue as far as you have appetite for.

With a car, add Silbury Hill and the long barrow on the A4 afterwards. On foot the full circuit to The Sanctuary and back is about five miles across open downland, and there is no shelter on any of it — check what the weather does here before you set out. Without a car, an Avebury tour from London covers the same ground in a day, and Avebury Tours compares them on how much of it they actually reach.

Frequently asked questions

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.

• National Trust — Avebury
• English Heritage — Avebury
• English Heritage — West Kennet Long Barrow