Stoned

Avebury Henge, and Avebury Manor Garden in January

Just a quick note to say that because there are lots of pictures in this piece, you may have to read on the app in order to get the whole thing.

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I want to tell you about Avebury. Can’t believe I’ve never been before. Perhaps I had been put off by a visit to Stonehenge amongst the crowds many moons ago. But anyway, I happened to be very close to Avebury with some time to kill last week, and it was January, AND it was raining, so…

Avebury is mind-blowing, and a bit bonkers. You’ve got this enormous deep ditch, originally NINE METRES DEEP, and dug by humans, hacking into the chalk with ANTLERS and, one presumes, their bare hands. The ditch thing happened just over 4500 years ago.

That’s crazy enough, because, like, WHY. I mean I understand about humans building a ditch for security, because humans are always fighting aren’t they, but NINE METRES??? It seems…excessive.

But that’s not all, because about two hundred years later (we think) more humans decided to haul some truly gigantic stones into the circle, and set them up on their ends…for…reasons.

Not just one or two gigantic heavy stones. One hundred and seventy of them. Double click on that; humans that we regard now as rather ‘primitive’…people with lives that we imagine were rather tough…people whose most advanced ‘machinery’ was a grinding stone with which to make flour for bread, who were living in small communities and just getting the hang of farming…these same humans felt it important enough to expend gargantuan amounts of effort and energy into pulling colossal stones around and setting them on end in a circle. Whatever they were doing, it must’ve been seriously important.

I love that we don’t have a clue what they were at. It’s enraging but it’s just so ENGAGING at the same time.

But back to the bonkersness of this site; it’s got several busy roads running through it, it’s got houses built within it, several of the stones have been removed, or hacked at, and you can walk amongst these huge monoliths and touch them. There’s an absence of preciousness here and an acceptance that these stones and the ditch have been and remain, part of the lives of the humans who live amongst them. You get to go up and touch something that was raised by hands like yours in a time so long ago that you can’t fathom it, all against the roar of traffic.

Avebury Manor and its garden was used as a residence and general archaeological headquarters of Alexander Keiller, a marmalade heir who bought the entire place in the 1930s because he’d been digging there for years and realised he needed to own it in order to preserve the prehistoric site. The garden is one of ‘rooms’ and is an example of a practical, Arts and Crafts garden rather than one conceived and created to make a splash.

Lots of yew, much of which is being renovated and I particularly loved this ancient stump, which is the perfect example of how hard you can cut this plant, only for it to come back, right from bare wood.

I also loved this one, which has been lifted and made into a very pretty umbrella shape

And these yew sculptures, which echo the stones of the landscape.

So yes, a very good garden to visit in the winter for structural inspiration. I really adored this narrow corridor made from a double yew hedge.

I’ve just finished writing a piece for The Garden Collective about tidying up, and that it sometimes feels like it’s an ecologically unsound occupation and that we must leave everything in a messy tangle in order to be a worthy custodian.

The problem with that is that your space would cease to be a garden if you didn’t control it in some way…it would just go back to being wilderness.

It was rather soothing to see all these tidy borders at Avebury, whose volunteer gardeners are obviously a great team. Immaculate kitchen garden too.

Enough.

What do you think they were doing with these stones, and the ditch? What on earth?

Do leave me a heart if you found this interesting?

x Laetitia