14 June 2022

Silbury

Back from Wiltshire now. It is a four hour drive away on a good run. There's so much I could blog about but I will begin with Silbury Hill.

Have you heard of it? On a woodland walk to the south of the county, we met a charming woman in her seventies. She was Wiltshire born and bred and well-spoken but had never heard of Silbury Hill until I mentioned it to her. Of course everybody has heard of Stonehenge - including the touring Canadian couple we met outside "The Royal Oak" in Swallowcliffe but they had also never heard of Silbury Hill.

I have known of it since teenhood . However, until yesterday, I had never seen the hill - the biggest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe.

I love the fact that nobody knows why it was built over a period of a hundred years between 2400 and 2300 BC. There are plenty of theories but it seems pretty certain that it was not a burial mound. Perhaps it was a ceremonial meeting place. It is estimated that it took eighteen million man hours to build and that 248,000 cubic metres of chalky earth were used. It stands about forty metres tall and covers an area of five acres.

You just shake your head in wonder and puzzlement. Maybe you close your eyes as you try to imagine the people of pre-Christian Britain and how they tried to make sense of the stars, the way that water welled from the ground, the clouds in the sky.

They embraced the unknown mystery of it all. In contrast, modern men dug tunnels into Silbury Hill in search of solutions and maybe treasure too. They didn't find these things and then typically they forgot to backfill their digs which later caused damage to the ancient hill. Earlier, Romans had also damaged it - building a settlement close by.

Below, is the only photo in the sequence that I did not take myself - an aerial shot of the mysterious mound though the top is surely not how it would have appeared in ancient times. I feel I ought to write a poem  about Silbury Hill and maybe I will. It is a special place and yet far less visited than Stonehenge which has become a "must see" attraction for millions.

31 comments:

  1. If only Peter Gabriel had sung about it instead of Solsbury Hill?

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    1. Damon Albarn refers to Silbury Hill in one of his songs.

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  2. I have visited Silbury Hill and also nearby Avebury (also not as well known as Stonehenge). There was certainly a lot of of that kind of barrow work being done more than likely burial grounds

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    1. There is so much evidence of ancient life in Wiltshire.

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  3. I have passed Silsbury Hill many times when visiting friends in the area. It is tied up in my memories with Avebury.
    At one time I confused the name of the Peter Gabriel song Solsbury Hill with fhis one. Perhaps the two sites are similar.

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    1. We parked Clint at Silbury Hill and then walked to Avebury - just over a mile north. I have never been to Solsbury Hill - near Bath.

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  4. Glad that you had safe journeys on your travels.
    No, I haven't heard of Silbury Hill either, but it's dimensions are very impressive. That's the trouble with way back then - they didn't have many means of leaving records for future generations. Or perhaps they never even considered that we'd be interested. Unlike today when every single thing is recorded to the extent that our future generations will suffer from information overload!

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    1. We are obsessed with knowing everything, recording our knowledge, weighing and measuring. Maybe those people did not share the obsession.

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  5. Mounds, pyramids- humans have always been attracted to these shapes, haven't they? I'd never heard of Silbury Hill which is to be expected but it's hard to imagine why a woman who was raised around that area doesn't know of it.

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    1. I guess that some people are not much interested in ancient sites.

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  6. It looks as if one can walk to the top on a path. You didn't walk up to the top and take a panoramic picture?

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    1. Visitors are asked NOT to walk on the hill though I was tempted to ignore that guidance.

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  7. Strange indeed. Almost like the pyramids of Egypt or Mexico, or the ziggurats of the Middle East, but much more primative.

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    1. It wasn't just a question of piling the material up. There was a mechanical pattern to the construction - at least my reading suggested that.

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  8. I see it wasn't perfectly round as I expected it to be.

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    1. After four and half thousand years and with later damage the circle is now imperfect.

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  9. I had never heard of it but am now fascinated by it. Their immense creativity, determination and artistry far eclipses anything I can imagine. (or replicate)

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  10. Why couldn't those ancients have left a guidebook to explain it all? That's what I want to know.

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  11. Ancient humans did some remarkable things. I wonder what kind of achievements they made that have been lost to time.

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    1. Especially "achievements" that were not physical or visible.

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  12. This reminds me of the song, Solsbury Hill.

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    1. That hill is thirty miles to the west of Silbury Hill.

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  13. My first thought was burial mound, but then you said no, so now I don't have a clue.

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    1. Why do we need to know River?

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    2. "Everyone knows
      this mound
      is just a belly full of gods
      waiting to be born."

      Taken from a poem by someone called Persephone (obviously not her real name). I have written so much about Silbury it could be a book. Paul wanted his ashes scattered on the hill, but then decided he would be happier in Yorkshire. Glad you are both safely back, Silbury was the place that stopped me in its tracks and I settled in Calne down the road.

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  14. Interesting! We have a mound called Mount Hoy not far from my home that we call "Mount Trashmore" as it was created as a garbage landfill. "Overall three million cubic yards of garbage and clay went into Mount Hoy, becoming a 150 foot hill. "
    Now it is used for hiking year round and sledding in the winter.

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  15. Not sure where and when, but I know I have read about Silbury Hill before, very likely on another blog. Good photos.

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  16. I've never heard of it either, but it brings Peter Gabriel's song "Solsbury Hill" to mind. (An entirely different place, but also an Iron Age earthwork!)

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  17. I just read the comments above -- I see that many others also thought of Gabriel's song!

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