Avebury Timeline
Following their construction in the late Neolithic, the stone circles at Avebury were eventually abandoned. They have been an enigma perceived in very different ways by all those who subsequently came to live in Avebury and its environs – Roman, Saxon, mediaeval and renaissance.
The stone circles at Avebury began to be broken up in the 1300s, when many standing stones, also known as megaliths, were buried. Others, too big to bury, may have been toppled deliberately or may have simply fallen over, as the land where they stood was being grazed, and eroded, by large flocks of sheep.
By the 1600s, the village had grown into the henge and some megaliths had been repurposed. One was used as a pigsty or cattle stall and another as a fish slab; others were moved to create a bridge.
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Stukeley demonised Tom Robinson as "The Herostratus of Avebury“,
referring to an Ancient Greek who burnt down a temple to achieve fame.
Learn more via the timeline below
To include everyone who has influenced Avebury is a vast and hotly debated subject - we have selected a number of key individuals who have brought an archeological or historical impact to the Avebury landscape - over time we will update and extend the timeline
John Aubrey 1626 -1697
A pioneer archaeologist, the first to record and first plan of Avebury was created by Aubrey in c.1675
Aubrey came from a long-standing, aristocratic local family and became a famous biographer and pioneer archaeologist. Aged 22, and just as the standing stones began to be broken up, he stumbled upon the Avebury henge monument while out fox-hunting. He went on to sketch the first plans of the site, collected in his Monumenta Britannica, and to conduct tours around it
Richard Colt-Hoare 1758 -1838
A seasoned traveler and talented artist with an interest in antiquities and archeology, Hoare gave up his position in the family’s banking business as a condition of inheriting Stourhead estate from his grandfather. Having excavated and identified local sites, he wrote and illustrated books about them, including Abury: A Temple of the British Druids and Ancient Wiltshire, which contain incredible images of the henge and the surrounding landscape.
Maud Cunnington 1869 - 1951
Archaeologist and first president of the Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Society, Cunnington worked on West Kennet Long Barrow, supervised the re-erection of standing stones in Beckhampton Cove and the West Kennet Avenue and rediscovered the site of The Sanctuary, which had been ‘lost’ since Stukeley recorded it. Excavated by Cunnington in 1930, interpreted as an unroofed timber structure later replaced by a stone structure, its surviving stones having been destroyed in 1724. With her husband, Ben, she bought the sites of Woodhenge and the Sanctuary and gave them to the nation
William Stukeley 1687 - 1765
Stukeley recorded Stonehenge and Avebury in the 1720s. A well-travelled clergyman, Stukeley first went to Avebury after he had transcribed a copy of Aubrey’s Monumenta Britannica. In his many detailed sketches of the site, he recorded its dimensions as well as the positions of standing stones that had been buried or broken up, elaborating a theory that the stone crcles had been erected by druids as part of a serpentine design.
Reverand A C Smith 1822 -1898
Reverend A C Smith’s 1884 book British Roman Antiquities of Wiltshire is subtitled ‘A Hundred Square Miles Round Abury’. One of the remarkable features is a series of hand-drawn maps showing Smith’s antiquarian doscoveries - the result of a thirty year exploration of the area on horseback. Created shortly after he settled in Yatesbury in 1852, referencing previous works by Hoare and Stukeley
Harold St George Gray 1872 - 1963
Gray was trained in archaeology by Pitt-Rivers and he developed his own techniques for recording sites, including three dimensional models. From 1908-1923, he led several digs at Avebury, where he discovered picks made from red deer antlers, proving that the ditch had been dug out of solid chalk to a depth of 11 m (36 ft).
Ruben Horsall 1652 - 1727
A clerk of Avebury and antiquarian, from a long-standing local family. In July 1722, Horsall told Stukeley about the positions of standing stones that had been removed and broken up: He remembered three standing in the pasture. One now lies in the floor of the house in the churchyard. A little farther, one lies at the corner of the next house, on the right hand, by the lane turning off to the right, to the bridge. Another was broke in pieces to build that house marked anno 1714
John Lubbock 1834 - 1913
​A banker and liberal politician with a wide range of interests, including evolution and archaeology, Lubbock coined the terms “paleolithic” and “neolithic”. While visiting Avebury with his daughters, in June 1871, he had lunch with Bryan King, the Rector of the village church, and mentioned that he ‘would not object to purchase the two meadows in this village containing the stones & part of the Dyke’. In 1872, he made good on his promise by buying a plot to stop it from being built upon.
In the following decade, he introduced the UK Ancient Monuments Protection Act.
Alexander Keiller 1889 - 1955
​Archaeologist and philanthropist, Keiller was nine years old when he inherited a fortune made from the family marmalade business. A flamboyant character with a passion for archaeology, he bought 950 acres of land around Avebury and carried out digs at Windmill Hill and the West Kennet Avenue before, in 1937, he began supervising the re-erection of buried stones in the Avebury stone circles. In 1943 he sold most of his local land holdings to the National Trust and, after his death, his widow, Gabrielle, donated the Alexander Keiller Museum and its contents to the nation
Doris Emersen-Chapman 1903 - 1990
​Having trained as an artist in Paris and exhibited her work in London, Chapman joined Keiller’s Morven Institute of Archaeological Research. In the 1930s, she drew detailed images of the megaliths at Avebury, as they were excavated, and reconstructed faces based on skulls from nearby burial mounds, as shown below. In 1939, she wrote a guidebook entitled Is This Your First Visit to Avebury? Her portrait of Keiller, aged 44, showed a deep connection. She became his third wife in 1938.
Wayland Young 1923 - 2009
​A journalist, politician and hereditary peer, Young wrote extensively about preservation laws and policies in the United Kingdom. While in Labour government, he worked to set up the Department of the Environment and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and later became Chairman of the Council for the Protection of Rural England. As the first president of the Avebury Society, he and his wife, Elizabeth, actively supported campaigns to protect the site.
Maud Cunnington 1869 - 1951
Archaeologist and first president of the Wiltshire Archaeological & Natural History Society, Cunnington worked on West Kennet Long Barrow, supervised the re-erection of standing stones in Beckhampton Cove and the West Kennet Avenue and rediscovered the site of The Sanctuary, which had been ‘lost’ since Stukeley recorded it. Excavated by Cunnington in 1930, interpreted as an unroofed timber structure later replaced by a stone structure, its surviving stones having been destroyed in 1724. With her husband, Ben, she bought the sites of Woodhenge and the Sanctuary and gave them to the nation
Stuart Piggott 1910 - 1996
​A prominent archaeologist and prolific author, Stuart Piggott founded the Prehistoric Society and wrote William Stukeley: An Eighteenth Century Antiquary. Having worked with Keiller on several sites, including Avebury and the Kennet Avenue, he and Richard Atkinson led an excavation at the West Kennett Long Barrow, where they discovered several human remains. This chambered barrow, first excavated by John Thurnam in 1860, is one of the key megalithic tombs in the British Isles
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Faith Vatcher 1927 - 1978
​With her husband, Vatcher led excavations at a number of prehistoric sites in southern England, including the western side of the Avebury henge and what is now the visitors’ car park. From the mid 1960s to her death, she was curator of the museum at Avebury and she wrote the official guidebook to the Avebury monuments
Harold St George Gray 1872 - 1963
Gray was trained in archaeology by Pitt-Rivers and he developed his own techniques for recording sites, including three dimensional models. From 1908-1923, he led several digs at Avebury, where he discovered picks made from red deer antlers, proving that the ditch had been dug out of solid chalk to a depth of 11 m (36 ft).
Isobel Foster- Smith 1912-2005
​Smith studied English Neolithic ceramics and worked with Keiller at Windmill Hill. In 1956, she moved to Avebury and began the enormous task of writing up his excavations from the 1920s and 1930s, as published in her book Windmill Hill and Avebury in 1965. At the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, she worked as a Senior Investigator until her retirement in 1978. A founder-member of the Avebury Society, she campaigned with others against commercial and tourist developments and continued to live in the village until her death, at 92, in 2005.
Dr Kate Fielden 1944 - 2023
​An archaeologist by profession, Fielden became a leading light in the Stonehenge Alliance campaign, as she was vehemently opposed to the A303 development proposals for a tunnel through the World Heritage Site. She also campaigned tirelessly for Save Our Skylines, Avebury in Danger, the Avebury Society, the Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England and the World Heritage Site.
Alexander Keiller 1889 - 1955
​Archaeologist and philanthropist, Keiller was nine years old when he inherited a fortune made from the family marmalade business. A flamboyant character with a passion for archaeology, he bought 950 acres of land around Avebury and carried out digs at Windmill Hill and the West Kennet Avenue before, in 1937, he began supervising the re-erection of buried stones in the Avebury stone circles. In 1943 he sold most of his local land holdings to the National Trust and, after his death, his widow, Gabrielle, donated the Alexander Keiller Museum and its contents to the nation