"Amesbury - A World Heritage Site" Amesbury by JulesH

Driving on from Stonehenge and Woodhenge, we spotted another stone circle on the map near to the village of Amesbury, so we thought we'd take a look. We drove around near the village for a while spotting the occasional large stone from the car window. It wasn't until the third driveby that we realised that the village of Amesbury itself was bang in the middle of several huge circles! The scale of them makes Stonehenge seem like a lego model! Although the stones aren't shaped into impressive oblongs and joined together like the Sarsen stones at Stonehenge, they are arranged in large circles and upended, which is still pretty impressive!

As with most prehistoric stone circles, the monument has not survived unscathed, but this surely only adds to the interesting history about the circle and the people who have lived nearby? It seems that in the 17th century the villagers of Amesbury decided that the stone circle they live within had devil worshipping connotations and should be destroyed (into the bargain, the stones, once broken up by burning in a fire pit, made excellent builing materials for new housing!)

Some of the stones still remain buried, but others were resurrected by Alexander Keiller who bought the Amesbury site in the 1930s and began to restore buried stones to their original positions. His work remains unfinished and there is still some debate as to whether it should be continued.