Photo Kris Hoffman

The Avebury Stone Circles are one of the largest and best known prehistoric sites in Europe, designated a World Heritage Site and in the care of the National Trust.

Avebury's first stones were being assembled from about 2500 B.C. and were built on a huge circular bank. Later, a ring of 98 stones encircled two smaller circles of 30 stones each. 

The stones  were brought from the Avebury Hills, a few miles east of the monument, and dragged using a combination of man-power, oxen and gravity. It's believed the circles were temples and evidence can be found with its alignment to the midsummer sunrise.

Many of Avebury's stones were toppled and buried in Anglo-Saxon times, when the Christian church urged destruction of pagan symbols. In that period, a man was killed by one of the stones falling over unexpectedly into the pit which was being prepared for its burial. No attempt was made to extract his body, and a pair of scissors, a lancet, and three silver coins were found next to the skeleton, and the stone is now called the Barber's Stone.

Other interesting stones are the Swindon Stone - the largest (it weighs about 60 tons), the Devil's Chair (local legend attributes mystical powers to the stone such as the ability to summon the devil if you run around it 100 times anti-clockwise), and the Repaired Stone, which has been reconstructed into a very unusual shape. Not all the stones now stand and concrete markers show positions of the lost stones.

Avebury also hosts a museum in which can be found the remains of a prehistoric child called 'Charlie', and the museum houses one of the most important prehistoric archaeological collections in Britain.

Information Wiltshire County Council