Around 2900 BC the people of the Marlborough Downs entered a golden age of wealth and power that lasted eight centuries. During this period they built the greatest Neolithic ceremonial complex in Europe, stretching for a mile and a half from The Ridgeway at Overton Hill to the modern village of Avebury. Much of the Avebury complex still exists. The complex begins at the remains of a stone circle destroyed by a farmer in the 1710s. Cement posts now indicate where the original stones once stood. Within sight of this stone circle rises Silbury Hill, a massive 12-storey-high artificial hill, built like a wedding cake of seven drum-shaped chalk structures covered with turf. Kennet Avenue, a ceremonial avenue of eight-ton sarcens originally 11ž2 miles long, links Silbury Hill with the great stone circles at Avebury. At Avebury, two of what would have been the largest stone circles in Europe are dwarfed by a third massive stone circle inside a giant bank and ditch that completely encloses the original two circles and a great part of the village as well. A dozen of the Avebury sarcens still stand, each weighing about 50 tons. The village itself is a bit of old England set incongruously amidst the great pagan stones. It has a Norman church, medieval tithe barn (housing a fine museum), Elizabethan manor, and handsome 18th-century cottages. These cottages contain most of the missing sarcens, broken into the building blocks that make up their well-trimmed walls.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in British Heritage magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

The Avebury Complex, completed around 2300 BC, marked a high point of The Ridgeway’s history as an important road. By the year 2000 BC Avebury was in decline and farmers had placed their field walls across the Kennet Avenue. Then, 15 centuries later, the local Celts built hill forts along The Ridgeway to command both the trackway and the valleys below. These were not simple camps. They were great military fortifications, with deep ditches placed outside high banks for maximum defensibility.

Three of these great Celtic hill forts still guard the Ridgeway. To the east of Wiltshire, the path runs beneath the high banks of Uffington Castle. Beneath this Celtic fort lies the great White Horse, a huge tribal totem cut into the chalk. Seven miles further on, the ancient road passes under the triple ramparts of Liddington Castle. Another four miles, and the historic Ridgeway passes beneath Barbury Castle, enclosing more than 11 acres behind high double banks. Both Barbury Castle and Uffington Castle are easy to visit, having developed facilities for tourists. However, Liddington Castle offers a more authentic experience. The hill fort is an easy one-mile walk from the B4192 north of Aldbourne, up a gentle slope, waymarked all the way. The path skirts a field’s edge, then crosses the castle’s great rampart. Along the path lies a monument to writer Richard Jeffries and local poet Alfred Williams.

The Ridgeway also figured prominently in the post-Roman era, when the great military conflicts of the Dark Ages played out along its length. Liddington Castle and the nearby hilltop village of Baydon may have been the site of the great battle of Mons Badonicus, where King Arthur reversed the Saxon invasion of the late 400s AD. During the Arthurian era, someone (no one knows who) erected the mysterious Wansdyke, a high bank and ditch that marks a military frontier between forgotten kingdoms. The dyke intersected the ancient road south of where the designated National Trail now ends. Sixty or so years later, the West Saxons followed the Ridgeway across the Wansdyke to Barbury Castle, where they fought the decisive battle that destroyed Celtic British power in what is now England. Three centuries after that, the soldiers of Wessex under Alfred defeated the invading Danes on the Ridgeway at ‘Ashdown’, somewhere between Uffington Castle and Liddington Castle. The Battle of Ashdown marked the beginning of the nation of England and the end of the Dark Ages. After Ashdown, The Ridgeway went back to sleep.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to