They have sometimes us’d of these stones for building houses; but say, they may have them cheaper, in more manageable pieces, from the gray weathers. One of these stones will build an ordinary house; yet the stone being a kind of marble, or rather granite, is always moist and dewy in winter, which proves damp and unwholsom, and rots the furniture. The custom of thus destroying them is so late, that I could easily trace the obit of every stone; who did it, for what purpose, and when, and by what method, what house or wall was built out of it, and the like. Every year that I frequented this country, I found several of them wanting; but the places very apparent whence they were taken. So that I was well able, as then, to make a perfect ground-plot of the whole, and all its parts. This is now twenty years ago. ’Tis to be fear’d, that had it been deferr’d ’till this time, it would have been impossible. And this stupendous fabric, which for some thousands of years had brav’d the continual assaults of weather, and by the nature of it, when left to itself, like the pyramids of Egypt, would have lasted as long as the globe, must have fallen a sacrifice to the wretched ignorance and avarice of a little village unluckily plac’d within it; and the curiosity of the thing would have been irretrievable.
Such is the modern history of Abury, which I thought proper to premise, to prepare the mind of the reader. All this was done in my original memoirs, which I wrote on the spot, very largely. Tho’ it was necessary for me then to do it, in order to get a thorough intelligence of the work; yet I shall commit nothing more to the press, than what I judge absolutely necessary to illustrate it.
In regard to the natural history of the stones, ’tis the same as that of Stonehenge, which is compos’d of the very same stones, fetch’d from the same Marlborough-downs, where they lie on the surface of the ground in great plenty, of all dimensions. This was the occasion, why the Druids took the opportunity of building these immense works in this country. The people call these great stones, sarsens; and ’tis a proverb here, as hard as a sarsen; a mere phœnician word, continued here from the first times, signifying a rock. The very name of Tyre is hence derived, of which largely and learnedly Bochart, Canaan II. 10. This whole country, hereabouts, is a solid body of chalk, cover’d with a most delicate turf. As this chalky matter harden’d at creation, it spew’d out the most solid body of the stones, of greater specific gravity than itself; and assisted by the centrifuge power, owing to the rotation of the globe upon its axis, threw them upon its surface, where they now lie. This is my opinion concerning this appearance, which I often attentively consider’d. ’Tis worth while for a curious observer to go toward the northern end of that great ridge of hills overlooking Abury from the east, call’d the Hakpen, an oriental name too, that has continued to it from Druid times. A little to the right hand of the road coming from Marlborough to Abury, where are three pretty barrows, and another dish-like barrow, if we look downwards to the side of the hill toward Abury, we discern many long and straight ridges of natural stone, the same as the gray weathers, as it were emerging out of the chalky surface. They are often cross’d by others in straight lines, almost at right angles. For hereabouts, it seems, that the chalk contracting itself, and growing closer together, as it hardened, thrust the lapidescent matter into these fissures. ’Tis a very pretty appearance. This is near that part of the downs call’d Temple-downs. There are no quarries, properly speaking, nearer Abury than Swindon, and those have not long been dug. In Caln they dig up a paltry kind of stone, fit for nothing but mending the highways. But our gray weather stone is of so hard a texture, that Mr. Ayloff of Wooton-basset hewed one of them to make a rape-mill stone, and employ’d twenty yoke of oxen to carry it off. Yet so great was its weight, that it repeatedly broke all his tackle in pieces, and he was forc’d to leave it. It may be said of many one of our gray weathers,
Est moles nativa, loco res nomina fecit.
Appellant saxum, pars bona montis ea est. Ovid.
Lord Pembroke caus’d several of these stones to be dug under, and found them loose, and detach’d. My lord computed the general weight of our stones at above fifty tun, and that it required an hundred yoke of oxen to draw one. Dr. Stephen Hales makes the larger kind of them to be seventy tun. Mr. Edward Llwyd, in his account of the natural history of Wales, Phil. Trans. abridg’d, Vol. V. 2. p. 118. writes, he found a strange appearance of great stones, and loose fragments of rocks on the surface of the earth, not only on wide plains, but on the tops too of the highest mountains. So the moor stones on the wastes and hill-tops of Cornwall, Derbyshire, Devonshire, Yorkshire, and other places, of a harder nature than these, and much the same as the Egyptian granite.
TAB. IX.
P. 16.
The Roman road leading from Bekampton to Hedington July 18. 1723.
Stukeley del.