Not So Prehistoric Avebury

Avebury Stone Circle is proclaimed as the largest in Europe, forming the centre of what remains of the most impressive Neolithic landscape in Britain. Guidebooks sometimes mention, however, although almost only in passing, that the stones were ‘partly restored’ by Alexander Keiller in the 1930s. The meaning of this ‘part’ restoration was made clear to an unsuspecting public last autumn, when the press learned of the discovery of a cine film of Avebury’s ‘prehistoric’ stones being erected. The heirloom film had lain in a wardrobe for more than thirty years, having last been shown to children in Avebury more than fifty years ago.