Durrington Walls

Abstract

Probably not one in ten thousand of those who pass through the middle of Durrington Walls is aware of its existence. Though plainly visible when once pointed out, the earthen ramparts have been so greatly altered by ploughing as to be hardly recognizable, and the reconstruction of their orginal form is a very pretty exercise in field-archaeologyThe walls consists of a round enclosure, cut into two unequal parts by the road from Amesbury to Netheravon (Wilts), about a mile and a half north of Amesbury, on the west bank of the Avon. Woodhenge is only eighty yards to the south, close to and on the west side of the same road. The earthwork differs fundamentally from the ordinary defensive ‘camp’, for it encloses, not a hill-top but a coombe or hollow, and it has its ditch inside, not outside, the rampart. In this latter respect it resembles the circles at Avebury and Marden in Wilts, Knowlton in Dorset, Thornborough in Yorkshire, and Arbour Low in Derbyshire; though there are points of difference. In size, Durrington Walls compares closely with Avebury, whose great earthen circle is slightly smaller in diameter; rom east to west the internal area of the Walls is 1300feet across, and from north to south about 1160 feet. (The average diameter at Avebury is 1130 feet). Both too are within easy reach of a stream, the Avon being IOO yards from the eastern entrance of the Walls, and the Kennet 330 yards from the nearest point of the great circle at Avebury. The enclosure at Marden actually touches the banks of the Avon at a point higher up in its course.