The Ridgeway missing link

The theory that the Ridgeway was a pilgrimage route to Stonehenge basically is this: follow the old stone road along the Chilterns and Downs, then the River Avon down to Durrington Walls and then to the henge itself.

This leaves a missing link. As mentioned in my log for Days 10 and 11 I discovered that there is a lot of evidence for an ‘old’ Ridgeway on OS maps after the national trail diverges just before Chiseldon and below I look at evidence for the actual pilgrimage route.

Stonehenge’s sarsens were also brought from near Avebury to the monument site in around 2500BC during the phase 2 rearrangement of the site, but how?

The Ridgeway and beyond

The road immediately west of Chiseldon is actually called Old Ridgeway, and further on sections of paths and roads are labelled Ridgeway in the font OS uses for antiquarian features. They run all the way down to the ridge along which the early medieval Wansdyke runs. This allocation must come from local historians, I assume.

If you were walking this route, you would see ahead of you the very prominent breast-shaped Walkers Hill (picture below), part of Pewsey Downs, and at its summit the long barrow known as Adam’s Grave. So this was an important location even in the fourth millennium BC. There are a number of other barrows or tumuli along the ridge and there are signs of incised ‘Grim’s Ditch’-style pathways on the hill itself and on slopes to the immediate north and east.

A community must have been located in the vicinity that built these monuments. From the hill looking south today the village of Alton Barnes is visible at the end of a long gently descending ridge. This village, built around a spring which feeds one of the tributaries of the Avon, and from where the ridge line is visible, must have been the site of that community in Neolithic times. I was surprised to find another Ridgeway reference on the OS map just east of the village.

From here it would be easy to follow the stream down to where it joins the Avon branch at present day North Newnton. Whether the river back then was navigable from here is a moot point. The Kennet and Avon Canal when built used local springs to keep it working and it cuts right across the spring line of the Vale of Pewsey. This could have affected the flow of the Avon tributaries. It is also the case that below North Newnton the valley has extensive water meadows which still flood in winter: and winter was the time of pilgrimage. But whether navigable this far north or not, the river would have been an easy route to follow all the way to Durrington Walls, and it is even today navigable in a shallow craft such as a raft by the time a third tributary joins it a few miles further south, above Upavon.

Moving the sarsens

Until recently archaeologists believed that the sarsen stones that make up the bulk of the Stonehenge monument came from the sarsen fields east of Avebury, at an area now called Grey Wethers, about 25 miles/40km from the site of Stonehenge. If so, they must also have been transported along the Ridgeway, up and over the ridge then down into the Vale of Pewsey. An alternative route further east (shown blue above) looks even more promising, following a dry valley, Clatford Bottom, that drops slowly down to the River Kennet, incidentally passing a combe known as Devil’s Den. The route would then follow a rising dry valley, Hurley Bottom* to Walkers Hill. The OS map indicates an earthwork along part of this route, but I haven’t been able to investigate that to see if it matches the other incised tracks – though it is visible from Walkers Hill.

*STOP PRESS: Hurley Bottom passes through West Woods, which Mike Parker Pearson now believes is where the sarsens came from based on recent chemical analysis. If so, this makes a route following the Avon even simpler as it is only 15 miles from Stonehenge. He thinks it is more likely that the stones were transported via a route further west, from Knap Hill to Marden, crossing a branch of the Avon then up to Salisbury Plain and continuing at high level to Stonehenge. It’s suggested that 200 men could have moved the larger stones in 12 days (from West Woods).

But could they have made it easier by floating the stones down the river once it was deep enough to be navigable during the winter? A solid pine raft 0.5m deep and 8x10m on plan would displace enough water to carry a 20 tonne load (and its own weight) – which is the weight of the sarsen circle uprights. Something roughly twice as big would be needed for the trilithons. But people at this time may well have had dug out log boats such as those dated as early as 1700BC found in the Fens, or even something as sophisticated as plank built boats such as the Dover bronze age boat (c. 1500BC). Lashing together a few of these could reduce the water to be displaced by at least a third. Four or five of similar dimensions to the Dover boat (9.5x2m) would be enough. Another possibility is reed boats or rafts similar to those of the Uru people of Lake Titicaca, where whole villages are built on floating reed platforms and which would leave no trace in the archaeological record.

There is implied evidence that boats or rafts were being used in 2500BC at the time the sarsens came to Stonehenge, as Parker Pearson’s research has led to an understanding that boats were used to ferry pilgrims from Durrington Walls to the start of the Avenue, leading to the monument itself.

Thought experiment

You can imagine pilgrims asking for directions when they reach a community at the end of the chalk scarp near Chiseldon, and being told:

Take that path up and over the ridge. You'll see a big breast shaped hill ahead. 
Go there and from the top you'll see the smoke of a settlement due south. 
Follow the stream that starts there until you reach the place where you can pick up a raft to Stonehenge.

I have the luxury of not being a scientist and therefore not having to limit myself to provable facts. But having walked this route, see this as a thought experiment that is at least a plausible candidate for the Ridgeway missing link.