Avebury: The Prehistoric Monument Where You Can Actually Walk Among the Stones

Stonehenge is famous because it photographs well and because the roads and car parks built around it have concentrated the crowds. Avebury is arguably more interesting in every respect except photographs: it is the world’s largest prehistoric stone circle, you can walk among the stones freely, and a functioning village with a pub and a Norman church sits entirely inside the monument. The stones are not roped off. You can touch them, sit next to them, have your lunch beside them. This is either a wonder of access or a low-level management problem, depending on how you feel about the sheep that also share the henge.

The monument dates to around 2600 BCE, roughly contemporary with Stonehenge, and originally contained over 100 standing stones arranged in a large outer circle and two smaller inner circles, all within a circular bank-and-ditch earthwork henge nearly 400 metres in diameter. Around half the original stones survive; many were broken up and buried in the medieval period by a local community that considered them pagan. In the 1930s, archaeologist Alexander Keiller funded excavations and re-erected many fallen stones, funding this partly from his family’s marmalade fortune. This is a fact.

What to See

The outer circle stones are the main event. Many are large, the sarsen boulders weighing up to 40 tonnes, and they have the unselfconscious quality of things that were placed without being designed to impress tourists. Walk the full perimeter of the henge, which takes about an hour at a gentle pace, and go slowly enough to notice the variation in the stones themselves and the views from the bank top.

The Alexander Keiller Museum, housed in a 17th-century stable block on the site, is run by the National Trust and has a small entry charge. It explains the monument’s archaeology and the story of its rediscovery and excavation in depth. Go before the site, not after; the context makes the walk more meaningful.

West Kennet Long Barrow, 2km south of Avebury, is a Neolithic chambered tomb dating to around 3650 BCE, predating the stone circle by over a thousand years. Its passageway can be entered; the chambers on either side held the bones of multiple individuals, and the atmosphere inside is genuinely ancient rather than manufactured. Free access, open year-round.

Silbury Hill, visible from the road near West Kennet, is the largest prehistoric earthwork in Europe: a 30-metre-high artificial chalk mound of unknown purpose. The current consensus is that it was built in multiple phases beginning around 2400 BCE and served as a place of ceremony or significance for a community that did not leave a written record of their intentions. You can look at it from the car park but cannot climb it; the internal structure has been assessed as too fragile for visitor access.

The Village

The Red Lion pub sits inside the henge and is likely the only pub in the world located within a prehistoric monument. It serves decent food, local ales, and accommodates a steady stream of visitors who end up wondering whether eating lunch inside a 4,600-year-old ritual landscape should feel more significant than it does. It is also, straightforwardly, a convenient lunch stop.

Getting There

Avebury is in Wiltshire, roughly 9km west of Marlborough. By car from London, the A4 via the M4 takes about 1.5 hours. Without a car, the nearest train station is Pewsey (10km away), from which a taxi is needed. Stonehenge is about 30km south and the two sites are often combined in a day trip by car; the 1-2 hours needed to do Avebury justice do not compete with a morning at Stonehenge.

Entry to the stone circle and monument grounds is free. The museum and car park have small fees. The site is accessible year-round, any time of day, and on a midweek morning in autumn or spring you may find the outer stones almost entirely to yourself.