Avebury appears to have been made up of a vast circle of unhewn stones enclosing two other separate double circles. They are in ruins now, and more than six hundred and fifty of these huge stones have been destroyed. There are now standing upright only fifteen; sixteen have been overthrown, and eighteen are known to be buried. It seems that folk, who did not understand or care about these very ancient stones, broke them up and carried the pieces away to make boundary walls or to mend roads, and for any other purpose as they thought fit.
The remains at Avebury are believed to be much older than those at Stonehenge, dating back a thousand years or so before Christ. Those at Stonehenge, which covers a very much smaller area, seem to belong to the Iron Age, some two hundred years before Christ.
There are many single stones, especially in Cornwall and Wales, which also seem to have been connected with religious rites, but of this we know nothing for certain. Some are Dolmens—flat stones, each on four uprights. In later times they have served as boundary marks.
In various parts of England there are deep lanes or cuttings, which have received curious local names. There are no less than twenty-two such cuttings in different parts of England all known as Grim's Ditch. These, no doubt, formed boundaries, separating various tribes.
The White Horse, cut out of the slope of Uffington Hill, and several similar objects in Wiltshire, as well as the crosses—also cut in the turf—at Whiteleaf and Bledlow, may also belong to this period. Some learned men, however, have thought that they are of a later date.
From these early men, then, the Ancient Britons appear to have descended, and they were settled here a good many centuries before the coming of the Romans. Many of the wild tales and legends still told in country villages, about giants and fairies, have come down to us from these early times.
Dolmen at Plas Newydd, Anglesea. The scene of Druidical religious rites