XXXIII

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THE KENNET

When the traveller leaves Marlborough he bids good-bye, for many miles yet to come, to the pleasant forest groves, the rich, low-lying pastures, and the fishful streams that have bordered the road hitherto. The valley of the Kennet is, it is true, near by, and for the next six miles it may be glimpsed, on the left, like some Promised Land of Plenty; but the road itself is bare. The “green pastures and still waters” of the Psalmist, indeed, you think when mounting gradually out of Marlborough you see the pleasant water-meadows afar off as you toil up the shoulder of the downs, passing a picturesque roadside inn, the “Marquis of Ailesbury’s Arms,” and the village of Fyfield on the way, with a glimpse of Manton village down below, amid its elms and farmyards by the windings of the stream.

ROADSIDE INN, MANTON.

Fyfield (how many dozens of Fyfields are there in England?) is tiny, clean, and quaint, with a pinnacled church tower on to whose roof you look down from the road, and may glimpse in a backward glance the whole of the district traversed since Savernake Forest was left behind. There, in long dark clumps upon the distant hilly horizon are the grand avenues of that forest; the Bath Road descending from them like a white ribbon into Marlborough town, whose houses are hid, only the church towers shining white in the sun, against a green background. Ahead rises unenclosed downland, with chalky, flint-strewn road, the unenclosed wastes of green-grey grass, broken here and there with mounds, grass-grown too.

FYFIELD.

MARLBOROUGH DOWNS

On the left hand, at the distance of half a mile, perhaps, rises the church of West Overton, an offence here in its newness, for this road is Roman, these mounds are ancient British graves, and everywhere, look in what direction you will on these bleak and treeless wastes, are the mysterious vestiges of a people who had no arts, no science, no literature, who lived, in fact, a savage nomadic life, but who, for all those disabilities, have left records of their passing that may well remain when the civilization of to-day has perished. On these downs are countless tumuli; in the hollows are unnumbered thousands of stones, brought no one knows whence, or for what purpose, and the remains of cromlechs may be seen that add to the complex puzzle of the wherefore of it all. West Kennet village stands in the succeeding hollow, like some shamed modern trespasser, amid these prehistoric remains which appear, Sphinx-like, on the sky-line or stand lonely in the folds of the barren hills.

The district seems to have been a metropolis of the prehistoric dead (if, indeed, all these ruined stone avenues and circles are sepulchral), or some vast open-air cathedral of a forgotten faith; if they have a religious rather than a mortuary significance. For, but little over a mile distant, are the remains of the so-called “Druid Temple” at Avebury, a monument second only to Stonehenge in mystery, and a good deal more impressive in appearance; while, frowning down upon the highway, and standing immediately beside it, is that “greatest earthwork in Europe,” Silbury Hill.

Avebury village stands on the road to Swindon, on the borders of Marlborough Downs, and has been built within a great circle which appears to have been approached by an avenue of standing stones. A few of these may still be observed, standing beside the hedgeless road. Some idea of the vast size and impressive aspect of this circular monument of those dim ages before history began may be obtained when it is said that it consists of an excavation 40 feet deep and 4442 feet in circumference, encircled on the outer side with an earthwork 40 feet high, the whole enclosing nearly 29 acres. On the inner brink of this deep fosse there are now left thirty-five huge stones out of the original number of about one thousand. Nine of these are upright, ten thrown down, and sixteen buried. Traces of pits show where the farmers of many years ago dug up the others and took them away for building-stones or gateposts. Over six hundred and fifty others are known to have been destroyed, the cottages of Avebury and the roads having been built of their fragments. How the unknown builders of this weird place could have brought these huge rocks, some of them measuring fourteen feet in length, and all weighing many tons a-piece, from unguessed distances, remains a mystery.

MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON.

AVEBURY

The first mention of Avebury Temple is by Aubrey the antiquary. It was in 1648 that he first saw the place, which seems, curiously enough, to have been until then quite unknown. He came upon it quite by chance, when hunting, and must have been astonished at the discovery of so extraordinary a place. His account of it led that kingly amateur of science, Charles the Second, to visit Avebury on his way to Bath in 1668. Pepys, too, going to Bath, unexpectedly happened both upon Avebury and Silbury Hill, and viewed them and the sepulchral barrows that, crowned with pine trees, look down from the hill sides, with an admiration not unmixed with a superstitious dread.

AVEBURY.

The road to Swindon goes straight through this great earthwork, and is crossed midway by another; together, with part of the village built within the circle, cutting it up lamentably.

SILBURY HILL.

SILBURY HILL

Silbury Hill, which stands within sight, is a fitting pendant to these mysteries. Antiquaries have contended together in referring both to ancient Britons, Phoenicians, Danes, Saxons, and even Romans, and are divided in opinion as to their object: whether they were intended for Druids’ or Snake-worshippers’ temples, or whether they marked the last resting-places of those slain in some great battle fought before the dawn of history. That Silbury Hill stood here when the Romans came seems, however, to be certain from the fact that the old Roman road from Cunetio to AquÆ Solis (the existing Bath Road between Marlborough and Bath), engineered along the whole of its course in a perfectly straight line, swerves slightly from the south base of the hill, evidently to avoid injuring it. A learned antiquary (but the most learned must be reduced to the level of the most ignorant before these mute earthworks) considers that Silbury was raised to commemorate a battle, probably Arthur’s second and last battle of Badon Hill. The same authority thinks Avebury to be a burying-place of the dead slain in a great battle, and planned to show the dispositions of the forces engaged on either side.

But Silbury remains inscrutable. It is wholly an artificial hill, somewhat pyramidical in shape, and 170 feet in height. Its base covers five acres of ground, and was once surrounded by a stone circle, of which scanty traces are now left. The contents of it are estimated at 468,170 cubic yards of earth. Repeated attempts have been made to pluck out the heart of this mystery, but without success. So far back as 1777 it was mined from above by a party of Cornish miners, who worked under the direction of the then Duke of Northumberland and others, but nothing was discovered. Then in 1849 it was tunnelled from the base to the centre, where a space of twelve feet in diameter was examined, with the same disappointing result. Antiquaries consequently regard Silbury with hungry and expectant eyes.

Just beyond this baffling relic stands the Beckhampton inn, where the “coaches dined” and changed teams, and where the Bath Road divides into the two routes; the right-hand road going through Calne, Chippenham, and Box; the other reaching Bath by way of Devizes and Melksham. Some coaches went one way and some the other. The crack coaches, including the “Beaufort Hunt,” went by the former, which is two and a half miles shorter, and is the classic route, and always the one selected nowadays by record-breaking cyclists.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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