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Updated: July 9, 2025
W.H. Brooke, whose horses, coaches, and dogs excite so much mirth among the young friends of the MIRROR for, in truth, Mr. Brooke is an A.M. an associate of the MIRROR, and enables us to jump from Whitehall to Constantine's Arch at Rome, shake hands with the Bears of the Zoological Society, and Peg in the Ring at Abury.
In the afternoon come to Abury; where seeing great stones like those of Stonehenge standing up, I stopped and took a countryman of that town, and he carried me and showed me a place trenched in, like Old Sarum almost, with great stones pitched in it some bigger than those at Stonehenge in figure, to my great admiration: and he told me that most people of learning coming by do come and view them, and that the King did so; and the mount cast hard by is called Selbury, from one King Seall buried there, as tradition says.
You have all heard of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. Some of you may have heard of the great Druid temple at Abury in Wilts, which, were it not all but destroyed, would be even grander than Stonehenge. These are made of this same sugar-sandstone. But where did the sandstone come from?
Along the brow of this long ridge wanders that fascinating old track indifferently termed Ridgeway and Icknield Way, which only leaves the highlands to cross the Thames at Streatley. But we are off our own track now and must return to Avebury, or Abury as the natives have it.
In another slip, which is manifestly an outburst of the royal petulance, his Majesty demands, in a "displayed" paragraph: "Why name of Mr. If name of Chow Phya Bhudharabhay is to be thus: P'raya P'oo t'a ra P'ie. And why the London was not published thus: Lundun or Landan, if Bejrepuri is to be published P'etch' abury."
The Sonnet on a Stone Circle which opens with these words is conceived in a strain of emotion never more needed than now, when Abury itself owes its preservation to the munificence of a private individual, when stone-circle or round-tower, camp or dolmen, are destroyed to save a few shillings, and occupation-roads are mended with the immemorial altars of an unknown God. "Speak, Giant-mother!
Much regret has been expressed by all the writers who have dealt with this subject that at an earlier age when Stonehenge, Abury, and various other of the ancient monumental shrines of the British Isles were in a better state of preservation, and before bigotry and religious hatred had been aroused against them, more minute observations of their character and of all the details surrounding them could not have been made; yet, notwithstanding the late date at which these investigations were begun, it is believed that a fair amount of success has crowned the efforts which have been put forth to unravel the mysteries bound up in them.
Stukeley: "The situation of Abury is finely chosen for the purpose it was destined to, being the more elevated part of a plain, from whence there is almost an imperceptible descent every way. Into this you descend on all sides from higher ground. The whole Temple of Abury may be considered as a picture, and it really is so.
There is every reason to suppose that it still lingered in England after the invasion of the Cymri say not earlier than B.C. 600 for it was among them an object of worship; and we question whether they would have been likely to have adored a foreign animal, and, as at Abury, built enormous temples in imitation of its windings, and called them by its name.
The circle at Abury, the forepart of the snake leading toward Kennet, which I call Kennet Avenue; the hinder part of the snake leading toward Beckhampton, which I call Beckhampton Avenue; for they may be well looked on as avenues to the great temple at Abury, which part must be most eminently called the Temple.
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