a temple or great building. There are two heads of the river Kennet rising near it: one from a little north-west of Abury, at Monkton, runs southward to Silbury-hill; this affords but little water, except in wet seasons. At Silbury-hill it joins the Swallow head, or true fountain of the Kennet, which the country people call by the old name, Cunnit; and it is not a little famous among them. This is a plentiful spring. It descends between east and west Kennet, by the temple on Overton-hill, which is properly the head of the snake: it passes by Overton, and so to Marlborough, the roman Cunetio, which has its name from the river.
To conduct the reader the better through this great work, I must remind him of what I wrote in the account of Stonehenge, p. 11, concerning the Druid cubit or measure, by which they erected all their structures, that ’tis 20 inches and four fifths of the english standard. For this purpose I have repeated the [plate] wherein the english foot and Druid cubit is compar’d to any lengths, which must necessarily accompany us in the description. A ready way of having the analogism between our feet and the cubits is this, 3 foot 5 inches and a half makes 2 cubits. A staff of 10 foot, 4 inches, and a little more than half an inch, becomes the measuring-reed of these ancient philosophers, being 6 cubits, when they laid out the ground-plot of these temples; where we now are to pursue the track of their footsteps which so many ages have pass’d over.
The whole of this temple, wherein the town of Abury is included I have laid down in [Table I], the frontispiece, done from innumerable mensurations, by which means I fully learn’d the scheme and purport of the founders. ’Tis comprehended within a circular ditch or trench above 1400 foot in diameter, which makes 800 cubits, being two stadia of the ancients. A radius of 400 cubits, one stadium, struck the inner periphery of the ditch, in the turf. This is done with a sufficient, tho’ not a mathematical exactness. They were not careful in this great measure, where preciseness would have no effect, seeing the whole circle cannot be taken in by the eye on the same level. The ditch is near 80 foot, which is 45 cubits broad, very deep, like the foss that encompasses an old castle. The great quantity of solid chalk dug out of it, is thrown on the outside, where it forms a mighty vallum, an amphitheatrical terrace, which hides the sight of the town as we come near it, and affords a good shelter from the winds. ’Tis of the same breadth at bottom as the ditch at top. The compass of this, on the outside, Mr. Roger Gale and I measured about 4800 feet, August 16, 1721.
The included area of the temple containing about 22 acres, I observ’d to have a gentle descent, from the meridian line of it to the east, and to the west: carrying the rain off both ways. The north point is the highest part of the whole. About 35 feet or 20 cubits within the verge of this circular ditch, is a great circle of great stones. The epithet may well be redoubled. These great masses are really astonishing, if we contemplate a single stone, and consider how it was brought hither, and set upright in the ground, where it has stood, I doubt not, 3 or 4 thousand years. But how is the wonder heightened, when we see the number one hundred, which composes this mighty circle of 1300 foot diameter! The stones of this circle, tho’ unhewn, are generally about 15, 16, or 17 foot high, and near as much in breadth. About 43 English feet, measures regularly from the center of one stone, to the center of the other. Look into the scale and we discern these measures of the height and breadth of the stones. 17 feet is ten cubits; 43 feet the central distance from stone to stone, is 25 cubits of the Druids; so that the interval between is 15 cubits. Tho’ this be the general and stated measure, which was proposed by the founders, where the stones suited, and of the largest dimensions, yet we must understand this, as in all their works, with some latitude. The ancients studied a certain greatness: to produce an effect, not by a servile exactness no way discernible in great works, but in securing the general beauty; especially we must affirm this of our Druids, who had to do with these unshapely masses, and where religion forbad them applying a tool. But the purpose they proposed, was to make the breadth of the stone to the interval, to be as two to three. They very wisely judg’d that in such materials, where the scantlings could not be exact, the proportions must still be adjusted agreeable to their diversities, and this both in respect of the particulars, and of the general distance to be filled up. These stones were all fetched from the surface of the downs. They took the most shapely, and of largest dimensions first; but when ’twas necessary to make use of lesser stones, they set them closer together, and so proportion’d the solid and the vacuity, as gave symmetry in appearance, and a regularity to the whole.
Therefore tho’ 25 cubits be the common measure of the interval between center and center of the largest stones of this circle, yet this is not always the rule; for if we measure the two stones west of the north entrance (which entrance was made for the convenience of the town, by throwing the earth of the vallum into it again) you will find it to be about 27 feet. This is but 16 of the Druid cubits, and here us’d, because these stones are but of moderate bulk. The next intervals are 43 feet as usual, being of the larger kind of stones, so plac’d 25 cubits central distance, and then they proceed. This is in that call’d pasture IIII. in the ground plot.
I have always been at first in some perplexity in measuring and adjusting these works of the Druids, and they seem’d magical, ’till I became master of their purpose. Therefore to make it very plain to the reader, I shall repeat what I have deliver’d in other words, concerning this great circle, which is a general rule for all others.
TAB. XI.
P. 20.
Rundway hill 18 Iuly, 1723.
