There's been something thats been bothering me lately and I can't shake it
So welcome to a short video where Rebecca and I
offload the thing that's bothering me you see well if you're alive and well in a developed country
with the Internet it's highly likely that you might have heard of Stonehenge you may well have
even been there ironic it's not actually a henge but that's the story for another day now with that
in mind you may well have heard of Avebury another spectacular Stone Circle sits about 18 miles
almost directly north of Stonehenge you should go and visit if you haven't already now recently I
was showing a map this one this map it includes a number of things on it hinges Stone circles
wooden henges things like that oddly implies it's a straight line which is strange because you kind
of see Stonehenge as a center of the universe it's like it was the center for the Neolithic
people that constructed it but all of a sudden things were turned on their head we don't have
the Stonehenge being the center of the universe with this article we have a line or as the article
implies a cultural boundary between the Neolithic people the early Neolithic Stone Builders and the
beaker people the late Neolithic from Northeastern Europe. Coming over here still your stone circles
anyway so what exactly were all of these Stone circles talked about all of these monuments on
Route surely Stonehenge and Avebury are the only Stone circles at least that's what we thought
but they turned out to be loads. indeed now the big question is then well do these Stone
circles exist did they exist in the first place do they form part of a line or a route or a trade
link or as the article implies a cultural boundary let's go and investigate [Music]
so as you can probably imagine I mapped every stone circle I could find in wiltshire and
this line the location the condition all the extremely helpful website that is the megalithic
portal I'll pop the link in the description below if you like stones and megalithic structures and
all that kind of thing about the landscape this is a resource for you I'll show you this mapped
result shortly so let's go and find a few of these structures now we're heading south to North from
the megaliths and the blue stones of Stonehenge and I'm often left wondering about these Stones how
they came to be and perhaps more importantly how they've survived for around 5 000 years through
Industrial Age and now that question will become more prominent for the remainder of this video
so how reliable is that original map in that article you see there's only a small handful
of symbols on there and there are a mix of wooden henges and stone circles surely there's more than
that are we seeing the full picture here or a picture that's made out to fit a theory I'm not
sure so let's start with a fresh map of our own I've plotted both Stonehenge and Avebury there for
a little geographical context while we work our way through the rest of these structures
north of Stonehenge well I think tan Hill pops up next well sat below the Neolithic escarpment
carrying the mid Wilts way in the 1970s Catherine wiltshire wrote about a miniature Stone Circle
here nine upright sarens Stones each about four feet high with one large Stone around about six
foot in the center so if we head a couple of miles to the east well that combined with langdean bottom
while they're both not accessible Landean bottom Stones sitting deep in cow down Valley the
appearance seemingly the same size and context as Wiltshire wrote about with the tan hill stones
though again none are standing they all seem to be strewn about on the floor here now all of that
is fine but it's about time we saw something in person something tangible let's have a look just
to the Northwest on harerstone down oh I can see oh I can see loads of them in that field there
there's a couple down there there's one there I think it's on the left hand side now that fits
because there's almost like a henge like feature there and it's got stones on the edge of it
[Music]
we're not completely sure we should be in this um in this hill but there's no sign on the gate was
there it doesn't say private it's not long don't say private it's being very respectful right so if
this is or was a circle you've got one there you've got one there right behind the camera
that side um and you've got a few more on this Bank I've just walked through the middle of this
it's almost like a hill fort and there's upright sarsens over there Rebecca this is really cool
and on the edge of this oh look at this this is a really beautiful sight really really beautiful The
Valley in front of us and there's another Stone there again on the edge of the the embankment
I said those ones look like they've just been piled there trees growing out of them that's
perhaps a farmer didn't want them there but these ones ahead of us don't I live in pile there
oh certainly some of them look like they've been upright for quite some time
I'm gonna say that do you know what I reckon they've done with these I reckon they made a
horse jump out of them I don't reckon they are still upright from from the original position
which is real shame because there's there's wooden horse jumps all around in this field yeah [Music]
now as we head north the depth of this undulating landscape really captivates and we're surrounded
by burial mounds used for Millennia and when we add in the stones to that landscape these
circles that once were for whatever reason they stood you can't help but feel part of
it and just a Stones throw away from here sits the well-documented sanctuary at the
end of the southern part of the Ridgeway sits next to the A4 now archaeological excavations
have revealed much about this place the mix of standing stones and wooden poles here
in 1723 antiquarian William stukley Drew these circles and he did a detailed map of the ones
here at the sanctuary it documented their position shortly afterwards however they were destroyed
for agricultural purposes such a shame now the excavations here revealed two concentric Stone
circles but they also told the story of a teenage boy buried with his possessions such as a small Beaker
pot distinctive of the style that spread from the continent now chemical analysis of his teeth
confirmed that he may well indeed have come across from Europe and been part of this Beaker movement
talked about in the original article as we leave the sanctuary and head north there's evidence of
more Stone circles Falkner's Stone Circle close to Averbury then on North to winterbourne Bassett
I'm left wondering now about the original map the original map in that article which almost
drew a line because when we flipped to ours it's difficult to see any reasonable line at
all instead we seem to be clumped around locations that well they had plenty of available sarsens
right so we've now arrived in the southern part of Swindon we've got the huge Ridge in the background
which we've just come down from the south and this is the northernmost part of today's Journey
we're looking for Five Stone circles that seems really odd because we're really looking for a line
in this video it's five Stone circles were reputed to be just here in about a square mile a bit muddy
so this is day House Lane and I think the coats circle on the map you can see a very small little
black dots in a semi-circle sort of next to the road and already now yeah we can see some big
sarsens here in front of us all sort of lead down down on the floor someone's taking the time to
um cut around them yeah which is great which is really cool actually isn't
it because it gives you a little bit of context of this circle yeah and
um if you can make a circle out of this you're a better person than I am
This area of south swindon is absolutely sarsen
crazy isn't it every every driveway every road back up at Broome there's another sarsen
stone just sat there and I think we've counted it five or six now in our heads and that's
right because in this two square mile area there was reputed to be at least five maybe six Stone
circles day House Lane another adjacent to day House Lane broom coates Reservoir
fir clumps and Hodson up on the ridge to the south side of the village I think the
uh the folk of Swindon the Neolithic folk didn't read the memo when they got the Stone Circle uh
invitation they just went a bit mad and had a stone circle party and built six didn't they a little
bit so before we conclude on this let's check one more fur clumps sat next to the M5 now the noise
here was quite ridiculous as you can imagine but we did have a good look around A.D Passmore in
1890 concluded that the Stone Circle was gone now that's odd because in 1965 Richard Reese
declared that he had found the exact location of the stones and a small Stone Circle alas four
years later 1969 the M5 buried its way through here and whatever remained of the stone circle
so back in the land of the Assassins we've got East Kennett longborough just over the hill West
Kent longborough that way silvery Hill we've got the Westwoods full of sarsons we've got Lockridge
down over there full of sauces everywhere you look there's fields of sarsons provided in my
head very easy access to build these Stones so context of the line and context of the cultural
boundary was there really a boundary there was there a trade route I'd love to think of the
route because I love the fascination with the root so why not maybe these Stone circles did form part
of a link and perhaps the people at Swindon did indeed get a little bit um over overwhelmed with
their the memo to them and went a bit mad in the construction so instead of reading Circle they
thought the memo said circles yep so they built quite a few it's not really for us to conjecture
if there was a boundary between the beaker people and the early Neolithic but it's up to
us to go and have a look and maybe document some of these places as to the state they're in now so
this hasn't been a long form video that we said we were going to make all the time but we still
enjoy we wanted to make some of these smaller ones don't we as well every so often so we'll squeeze
some of these in as well so um we'll see you next time folks thanks for watching bye [Music]