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| "Silbury Hill" | Login/Create an Account | 44 comments | ||
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| Comments are owned by the poster. We aren't responsible for their content. |
| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Sunday, 25 November 2001 |
| A scrap of antler has proved that Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe, was completed around 4,500 years ago.
The first scientific evidence for the date of one of the most puzzling of our ancient monuments is one of two antlers found at the summit of the 128ft hill. It was discovered as archaeologists agonised over how to fill a gaping hole which had threatened the collapse of the Wiltshire monument. The fragments are the broken tips of the picks with which the monument was built, that were thrown into the top of the hill as the last gaps between the blocks of cut chalk were filled with rubble. While the first phase of building at Silbury may be centuries older, the dating of the antler proves the structure was complete almost 1,000 years before the last arrangement of the boulders at Stonehenge. The dating, by the Oxford University radiocarbon unit, yields a late Neolithic date of about 2490-2340BC, with 95% certainty of accuracy. Earlier attempts to date Silbury Hill were based on educated guesses of 2800-2000BC: its form is so unusual there is almost nothing to compare it with. "An archaeologist shouldn't say this, but it is the result we were hoping for," said Amanda Chadbury, English Heritage's ancient monuments inspector for the area. Although the Roman coins and the scraps of medieval horse harness also found in the excavation looked more intriguing, it was the antlers which caused most excitement. They were the first organic finds from a previously undisturbed part of the mound. Amateurs have been burrowing into the mound over centuries, the main cause of the huge shaft that opened up last winter. The monument remains as enigmatic as ever. Its construction was estimated to have taken more than 3m working hours. Despite a legend concerning a king buried on his horse - the target of generations of treasure hunters - no evidence was found of that. The question is still whether the monument was built before, after, or as part of the same project as nearby Avebury - where nothing giving such a reliable date has been found. The hole in the mound has been closed with blocks of polystyrene and a layer of chalk, and a seismic study, due within weeks, will show if Silbury is still unstable and in danger. Source: Guardian |
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| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Tuesday, 26 February 2002 |
| I have visited Silbury Hill several times and now believe that its purpose was to hold the bodies of
sacrificed individuals on the top for easy viewing by the ancient megalithic Gods. After a period of time, I suggest the bones were removed to West Kennet long barrow. From the top of Silbury Hill you will see that WKL Barrow is at the same level as the Hill. Multiply the number of bodies in WKLB by 18.6 (cycle of lunar standstill) you will get an amazing correlation to date 1st and last body was interred. |
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| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 1) by Jc on Sunday, 03 October 2004 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| I think "anonymous" forgot to take away the number he/she first thought of! Jc |
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| Silbury Hill Public meeting (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Friday, 21 October 2005 |
| English Heritage will be holding a public meeting about the repair of Silbury at the Study centre in Avebury on November 26th. Entrance is by (free) ticket, via customers@english-heritage.org.uk The proposed venue has limited space so may be altered depending on demand but early booking would probably be advisable. |
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| The Silbury Lament - ttto the famous hymn :) (Score: 1) by Andy B on Monday, 24 October 2005 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| There is a green hill down our way a prehistoric mound There¹s a car park for the visitors and fences all around We may not know, we cannot say what¹s happening in there But the Powers That Be assure us that we really needn¹t care In seventeen seventy six was dug a shaft from top to toe T¹was just a Duke¹s amusement, but t¹was eight feet wide you know They dug it deep with pickaxes to find a glorious king With golden throne and chariot - they didn¹t find a thing The spoil heap stood for centuries and soon became quite thin The hill was capped with wood and chalk but no-one filled it in Another shaft was tunneled deep - again the finds were thin They propped it up with pit supports - but never filled it in In sixties Britain you¹d have thought we¹d know best what to do But the Powers That be allowed it, so the BBC dug too The show was fun, the nation gasped as camera teams went in But you know, when they had finished it they didn¹t fill it in Atop the hill the weathering was taking many tolls >From the thousand feet of visitors and from the rabbit holes And then one day a void appeared no rabbit hole was that The Powers That Be leapt up the hill and covered up the gap They took their surveys, hummed and hawed, and fenced off hole and mound Meanwhile, a set of idiots from Holland abseiled down They moved the cap, they scraped the side, they damaged it for sure And when the next few rainstorms came the hole had grown some more The Powers That Be eventually decided they must act They employed a firm called Skanska to collect up all the facts They surveyed here, they poked down there, they used some seismic shocks And then they took the contract, filled the shaft with plastic blocks We¹ve read the website very nice - we¹re really quite impressed At the way the Powers That Be have shown they¹ve always done their best But here we stand, four years have gone, our mound looks calm and still But the Powers That Be still seem to care f*** all for Silbury Hill [Jezreell©2004] |
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| Re: Ancient hill's holes to be filled (Score: 1) by Andy B on Thursday, 08 December 2005 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| See also Heritage Action's report here: http://www.heritageaction.org/?page=heritagealerts_silburyhill |
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| Ancient hill's holes to be filled (Score: 1) by Andy B on Monday, 28 November 2005 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Plans to stabilise the ancient Silbury Hill mound in Wiltshire have been unveiled by English Heritage. The man-made monument, believed to date to the Neolithic period, developed a hole at the top five years ago after the collapse of infilling in a shaft. There are proposals to remove an inadequate backfill from this and other cavaties and replace it with chalk. English Heritage said it would preserve the long-term stability of the hill while minimising further damage. The organisation is also looking at how to fund the project. Regional director Bob Bewley said: "If all goes to plan we're probably looking at some small amount of work during 2006 and then it'll probably happen in the summer of 2007. More: BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/wiltshire/4477192.stm |
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| Did the Romans worship on the great hill? (Score: 1) by Andy B on Thursday, 27 July 2006 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| traveller writes: New research has shed interesting evidence that the Roman’s may have used Silbury Hill for ritual activity. It had been thought that the hill was used purely during the Neolithic period, but now test are revealing its Roman links, and possibly late Iron Age too. Geophysical survey work to the east of the hill shows a series of enclosures, leading experts to tie this in with Romano-British settlements. Out of the four discovered. One may have been a double-ditched one containing pits, two single-ditched enclosures, of which one contained evidence of a circular structure within, and a large polygonal enclosure. English Heritage plan to carry out detailed analysis of all Roman finds from around the hill. Objects found include fragments of pottery and animal bone, some coming from the surrounding moat. There is evidence of sacred wells around the hill, four are known of, and two seem to be closed up late during the Roman period. Roman masonry has been found in the wells along with earth, and other rocks, suggesting a deliberate back fill. Did these wells form part of a religious complex? Was it the work of anti-pagan Christians? Read the full article in BBC History magazine, August 06 edition. Every time I visit Silbury It always leaves me wondering why and what for, I know it’s not on the scale of Stone Henge for effort or time scale. Part of the draw I guess, not knowing, is part of the mystery that keeps us interested. Trav |
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| Re: Did the Romans worship on the great hill? (Score: 1) by AngieLake on Monday, 13 November 2006 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| There are some interesting pictures and reports on Silbury Hill on the Eternal Idol website. |
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| Silbury stabilisation (Score: 1) by Aluta on Friday, 11 May 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Pete Glastonbury is taking photos of the process as it unfolds and is posting them here. |
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| Re: Did the Romans worship on the great hill? (Score: 1) by ShropshireTraveller on Friday, 11 May 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Engineers are to re-open a tunnel that goes deep inside the ancient monument of Silbury Hill in Wiltshire. The tunnel, dug in 1968, was the last made over many centuries by archaeologists exploring the site. Engineers are planning to stabilise the 5,000-year-old structure, which is believed to be the world's largest man-made prehistoric mound. More here at the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6645367.stm |
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| Weekly Updates (Score: 1) by coldrum on Monday, 21 May 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Weekly Updates As the conservation project at Silbury Hill progresses, weekly updates will be available to download here. Each Friday, starting with the 18th of May, a new PDF will be made available which will show how far we have got into the tunnel, with images from inside Silbury Hill and an update on the key progress and findings from that week of the project. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.17511 |
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| Re: Weekly Updates (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Monday, 28 May 2007 |
| I wonder how ot's going. As you guys are probably aware, their are several (possibly many more unregognised or misinterpreted as tumuli) similar mounds in UK - most well known is the Marlborough mound. I hear claims that Marlborough mound is 2nd largest after Avebury - really? Anyone know about the mound in Lewes, Sussex? Also a couple in scotland, and Gib Hill next to Arbor Low, may be suspect. I'd be interested if anyone knows of other possible "Avebury type" mounds or can help on this. Nice site :) |
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| Film clip of the repair of Silbury Hill (Score: 1) by Andy B on Sunday, 10 June 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Film clip of the repair of Silbury Hill, the first of a series: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.17512 |
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| Re: Film clip of the repair of Silbury Hill (Score: 1) by PAB on Sunday, 10 June 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Thanks Andy - good to see EH sharing this clip, definitely worth adding to web sites to follow up! |
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| Guardian recommend climbing Silbury Hill (Score: 1) by Andy B on Thursday, 19 July 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Fans of the Guardian may change their minds about what a great newspaper it is to read that according to them it's now OK to climb Silbury Hill (see near bottom) http://www.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2123895,00.html This got a reply from Lord Avebury no less: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2129468,00.html |
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| Metaphoric souls are bared Silbury Hill dig (Score: 1) by bat400 on Thursday, 25 October 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| "Spirit Tomb" theory summarized. "Researchers have long been mystified as to why the giant prehistoric mound in Wiltshire was built. But following one of the UK's most extensive and expensive digs, they appear to have found their answer: Silbury Hill may well have been a tomb, not for bodies, but for the souls of the dead. "The English Heritage dig, which cost £1m, tunnelled 85 metres into the 40-metre-high man-made hill, discovering that its Neolithic builders had incorporated hundreds of heavy sarsen stones into its matrix. Sarsen, the silicified sandstone still found in great quantities in Wiltshire, was also used to build Stonehenge and Avebury. Heavier than other types of stone, archaeologists have long suspected that the material was regarded as sacred by Neolithic man. "Stones have been seen by many cultures as spiritually and physically interchangeable with humans – with a belief that particular stones contained the souls, spirits or even the transformed mortal remains of the dead. The belief was widespread, occurring all over the world. "Silbury Hill, researchers believe, could well have been built as a sort of spiritual tomb, filled with spirits rather than skeletons. " 'The new information we are obtaining from inside Silbury Hill is transforming our understanding of the site,' said the English Heritage archaeologist Jim Leary, who led the three- year investigation. 'The discovery of sarsen stones inside the final phase of the monument has also been a surprise. Given the almost certainly religious and ceremonial nature of Silbury, it is likely that these stones had some symbolic importance, potentially representing the spirits of dead ancestors.' Radio-carbon tests on the mound have also revealed the age of Silbury Hill for the first time. Archaeologists now believe construction on the primary mound started about 2400BC, which would mean it was built at the same time as Avebury and the first phase of Stonehenge." For more, see the article in The Independent. |
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| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 1) by Andy B on Friday, 26 October 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Thanks to Rus for these: In pictures: Inside Silbury Hill: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7059882.stm Discoveries include medieval postholes on top of the hill and iron arrowheads, indicating there may have been a huge military building there during the Saxon or Norman periods. One theory is that the top of the hill was lopped off around the time of the Battle of Hastings or even earlier. Last chance to solve puzzle of ancient hill: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2733437.ece |
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| Another article about Silbury Hill (Score: 1) by Andy B on Thursday, 01 November 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Last week experts from English Heritage, using pioneering tunnelling technology from the engineering company Skanska, reached its centre, 40 metres beneath the summit. Their primary purpose was not archaeology but preservation. Because of numerous botched explorations – from the Duke of Northumberland’s piratical attempt to dig for “hidden treasure” in 1776 to a BBC-funded dig in 1968 that was curtailed when nothing sensational (in TV terms) was discovered – the hill has developed alarming craters. So the present £1 million plan is to stabilise Silbury by backfilling the various tunnels and shafts with chalk. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/richard_morrison/article2771879.ece |
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| Re: Another article about Silbury Hill (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Friday, 02 November 2007 |
| Why the mystery over Silbury Hill? It is on the beacon chain that starts at St Michaels Mount, and was built to raise the watch and signal station above the local hills. It is exactly the right hight to give a view over these hills, and to get beacon signals out. This chain of beacons is part of complex defence communication system set up by the builders of Avebury. Avebury was a political centre and needed to be informed of any imminent danger. Watch and signal positions were set up on the coast and beacon chains passed the information to the political centre. All organised societies need a defence system, and intelligence is the first line of defence. Watch and signal stations were set up from the earliest prehistoric times wherever an organised society developed, and this realm was no exception. Like all long distance communication systems, it started as a simple chain, but soon became more complex. Stonehenge was a similar political center, with communication capability in all directions.Defence of the realm has always been nunber one priority for organised societies, and much of our ancient landscape has been misinterpreted as religious/ceremonial /sepulchral. ROGER B HUTCHINS. |
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| Re: Another article about Silbury Hill (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Friday, 02 November 2007 |
| What ever the actions of English Heritage are to stop the hill from caving inwards because the tunnels were not closed in the correct manner before.The end result at this moment in time is Silbury Hill, and West Kennet Long Barrow, and Woodhenge, and Glastonbury Tor are all removed from the LEY LINE system that feeds all ancient sites here in the UK..Taking out all the metal supports and sheeting MAY allow the energy to return, since the metal work has grounded all Ley power passing through Silbury Hill.The Atkinson work started the demiss of SH, and English Heritage finished it off this summer,so what else can go wrong I ask..Not to mention those Skanska people working inside Silbury Hill exposed to the energies rushing about with NO direction anymore, I think all of them with suffer illness in the coming years from this exposure.At its height the energy is FAR greater than experienced in genuine crop circles in the fields, so it remins what affect this will have on the people who worked inside the tunnels.My dowsing of the waste flint and anter horn was 150 years out to the carbon dating, not bad and cost me nothing to find,dowsing is the best fun ever....mmike. |
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| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 1) by Andy B on Saturday, 03 November 2007 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Cripes, it's Terry the Druid in the Daily Mail. Compellingly crap personality Journalism. Oh and don't forget Silbury Hill http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=491447&in_page_id=1770 |
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| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Saturday, 03 November 2007 |
| what an idiot! |
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| Radar and sonar reveal sarsen stones buried under Silbury Hill. (Score: 1) by Andy B on Tuesday, 26 February 2008 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Giant Mound Is Like an 'Underground Stonehenge' [groan - MegP Ed] Radar and sonar reveal sarsen stones buried under Silbury Hill. by David Keys Silbury Hill, a 4,400-year-old, 130-foot-high mound of chalk and dirt about 80 miles west of London, has finally yielded its ancient secrets. It is not the tomb of the long-forgotten King Sil nor the resting place of a golden knight. And it is not, despite the folklore, a dumping ground for the devil’s dirt, forced to drop there by the magic of priests. The story behind the mysterious hill is much less colorful. Silbury Hill is a shrine filled with rocks that, for Stone Age Britons, probably represented the spirits of ancient ancestors. The physical excavation (video) of Silbury Hill, along with studies using ground-penetrating radar and seismic sonar equipment, has shown that there is not a single human bone in the mound. Instead, dozens of sarsen stones, a type of sandstone that is also used for Neolithic stone circles like Stonehenge, are buried there. Local geologists think that during the Stone Age, the landscape around Silbury Hill contained hundreds of thousands of sarsen stones. Because the area is made mainly of chalk, prehistoric people would have seen no apparent natural origin for the stones. Archaeologists think the locals endowed these rocks with a spiritual importance that Silbury Hill still embodies. The area itself is considered sacred by modern pagans, who still make offerings at a nearby spring. Due to conservation laws, the prehistoric holy hill is out-of-bounds to pagans and tourists alike. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/the-mystery-of-silbury-hill |
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| Silbury tunnel finally closed (Score: 1) by Andy B on Wednesday, 14 May 2008 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Silbury gives up its final secret The secret of Silbury Hill, the most enigmatic prehistoric monument in Europe, isn't the monument but the monumental effort which went into building it, according to the archaeologist who has spent most of the last year slipping around on wet chalk deep in the heart of the hill. On a sunny morning last week a local druid scattered Wiltshire grass and wild flower seed on the summit of Silbury, to mark what engineers and archaeologists devoutly hope is the completion of a project to prevent the 4,500 year old hill from collapsing - 10 months and £1m over budget. http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2279497,00.html |
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| Re: Silbury tunnel finally closed (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Sunday, 18 May 2008 |
| An esoteric insight into the original purpose of Silbury Hill, and other ancient monuments, is provided by psychic Grace Cooke in a book entitled, 'The Light in Britain'. |
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| Silbury Hill Mystery Soon {?} to be Resolved (Score: 1) by bat400 on Saturday, 28 March 2009 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Submitted by coldrum, a strangely mis-titled story from the Telegraph. It is said that there is a greater concentration of ancient monuments in the Wiltshire countryside between Marlborough and Avebury than anywhere else in Britain. Many present an eternal puzzle to archaeologists ..., but Silbury Hill out-puzzles them all. There it sits by the A4, an outlandish sight dwarfing the cars that stream past its circular base. It is the largest man-made mound in Europe, but in silhouette it looks like an alien spaceship from a sci-fi movie. It is, in fact, more than 4,000 years old, and its purpose has been a well-kept secret for at least half that time. Suggestions range from the legendary, to the barmy, to the halfway plausible. One has it that the devil built it to hide a gold statue while on the way, for some unknown reason, to Devizes, another that it was the resplendent burial chamber of the mythical warrior king Sil and his horse. ...And then there is a hypothesis that, because of high levels of contamination of the water supply by grazing sheep, it formed a kind of reservoir of pure water, with rainfall percolating through its chalk structure to gather in the surrounding ditch. This one sounds practical until you learn that its making would have involved more than four million man-hours.... Silbury Hill is in the guardianship of English Heritage, in whose laboratories recent fascinating new finds are being investigated. Several years ago, a hole appeared at the summit of the Neolithic monument, around the spot where the Duke of Northumberland had sunk a shaft to carry out excavations in 1776. Further investigation showed that other tunnels from later digs were also unstable. Contracting a team of engineers to stabilise the internal structure also provided a chance to gain a greater insight into date and function. The work was only completed last winter... it seems Silbury had a part to play in later history. Archaeologists found a series of medieval pot-holes on top of the hill, indicating a large building. ... There is speculation, too, that Silbury was originally dome-shaped, and that its current flat-topped aspect was the result of later lopping off to create its military function. So the mound wasn't simply some ghostly feature that became abandoned in prehistoric times, says Rob Harding, the English Heritage project manager for the site. According to Harding, there is also evidence of Roman usage in the platforms along the side of the hill. "Often, the Romans adopted the local gods and forms of worship when they arrived in new countries, so we think it would have had some sort of ceremonial function for the Romans. ...." As Harding admits, none of this brings us remotely closer to finding a conclusive explanation for why it was originally built... Bit by bit, archaeologists are piecing together elementary facts of how Silbury Hill was built. There were, it seems, three main phases. The first used stacked turf capped with clay; the second used piled rubble chalk and was undertaken soon afterwards, around 2,400BC. It is possible there was a gap of a few hundred years between this and the completion of the third phase. It's worth remembering, as we admire the soft, turfy outline of Silbury today, that in its original conception it would have been stark white. Of course, we probably will never know what really went on in the minds of prehistoric men. It's almost as unbridgeable a chasm now as it was in the 17th century, when John Aubrey was delving around earthworks and bemoaning the lack of concern for "antiquities". New Age folk rather like the uncertainty. It means they can project all kinds of wild notions onto the likes of Silbury Hill. For the rest of us, it merely increases our sense of awe and wonder. For more, see telegraph.co.uk. |
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| Write-up of Silbury Hill lecture by Jim Leary (Score: 1) by Andy B on Thursday, 28 January 2010 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| Alex Down, via the Eternal Idol blog writes: It was an alarming situation. In May 2000, a large hole appeared in the top of what’s one of the most important archaeological monuments in Europe: Silbury Hill, in the care of English Heritage. The subsequent repair and restoration work gave Jim Leary, the archaeological director for English Heritage throughout the work, unique insights into possibly the most enigmatic of British prehistoric monuments. He talked about the findings and his ideas in a presentation to the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society in Devizes on 23rd January. Jim briefly covered previous investigations that all involved significant mining and tunnelling operations. In view of all the activity, it’s not surprising that torrential winter rains caused a slumping of the chalk into the voids left by the excavators. To prevent any further damage, major engineering work was needed, and this presented a wonderful opportunity for archaeological investigation where the engineers worked, using the latest techniques. Silbury is very low-lying in its landscape, near the Swallowhead Spring, and at the junction of at least three different geological deposits. Cut from the end of a natural chalk spur, it is surrounded by a huge ditch with causeway-like bridges, and what is termed a “ditch extension” that may have had a spring in it. The last excavation was directed by RJC Atkinson, clever archaeologist, but poor at documenting his work, so there are unfortunately few records of the dig. He proposed a long three-stage model of development, starting with a small proto-Silbury, of a few metres in diameter and, later, two further large additions. Jim’s work completely overturns this model, proposing instead an incremental approach (with as many as 20 stages) over what seems a very short period of 100 years, around 2400BC. While the original Atkinson phase 1 gravel mound is still the core of the new interpretation, Jim showed a thin layer of soil across the site which seems to show that the area was stripped of turf and soil in a preparatory phase. What remained appears to have been beaten flat and hard by hundreds of stamping feet. Read the full write-up at Eternal Idol http://www.eternalidol.com/?p=6179 |
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| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Monday, 01 February 2010 |
| Silbury Hill need not be such a mystery. The mound was raised exactly the right height to recieve and transmit fire signals over the surrounding hills. The need for long distance communications has always been required for defence purposes. Mounds were often used for fire beacons, and Silbury Hill is simply a very large fire beacon. All organised societies required defence systems, and early warning of danger has always been the first line of defence. Avebury was probably an important political centre, and required communication access to the coast in all directions.It is possible to find the links in the beacon chain in all directions. Roger B. Hutchins |
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| Re: Silbury Hill (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Monday, 01 February 2010 |
| no. It is lower than surrounding hills and no fire damaged chalk was found on the summit on any of the digs. |
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| New find in the British Library relating possible timber post inside Silbury (Score: 1) by Andy B on Wednesday, 03 February 2010 (User Info | Send a Message) |
| New information has emerged from letters written in 1776 about excavations at Silbury Hill and published for the first time in the new volume of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine. Local historian, Brian Edwards tracked down two letters, written in 1776 by Edward Drax to his friend, Lord Rivers, about excavations at Silbury Hill. Edward Drax from Bath , had hired a team of miners from the Mendips to dig a shaft from the top of Silbury Hill, to the centre of the hill, 125 feet below. The letters record that at first, the miners found little but large chalk blocks and deer antler. However, at 95 feet, some 30 feet above they expected the base of the mound to be, the miners discovered what Drax records as a 'perpendicular cavity' that was 6 inches across, and that 'we have already followed it already about 20 feet, we can plumb it about Eleven feet more'. He says that ‘something now perished must have remained in this hole to keep it open’. These letters, preserved in the British Library, suggest that a great timber post once stood in the centre of Silbury Hill, and matches a later account that fragments of oak timber were found at the centre of the mound. The timber may have stood over 40 feet above the earliest low mound which was one of the earliest phases in the construction of Silbury Hill. Edward Drax went on to write 'I wait with impatience ... and then I hope shall make a further Discovery'. Unfortunately, no later letter survives at the British Library. This article is one of 11 articles published in the Magazine, which is available only to Members of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. Membership can be purchased online at http://www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk. Other articles include an analysis of fragments of bluestone found near Stonehenge, and new research about a Neolithic Jadeite stone axe in the collections of the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. Source: http://wiltshireheritagemuseum.blogspot.com/2010/02/silbury-hill-new-find-in-archive.html see also http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/4884791.Long_lost_theory_on_Silbury_Hill_is_uncovered/?ref=rss |
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