tour & travel
Mysterious Marble in Hills
Silbury Hill — whose original purpose is still debated — is part of complex of Neolithic
monuments around Avebury, which includes Avebury Ring and West Kennet Long Barrow
By Seema Anand Chopra
I
n a landscape of pristine verdant stretch of greenery, the
41meter high Silbury Hill- rare Chalk grassland stands as
a lone witness to the mystery of its creation. We were at
the tallest prehistoric man- made chalk Mound in Avebury
England created for inexplicable reasons 4000 years ago or
before! Strangely, it reminded me of a green Pyramid and the
Indian Shivlingam!
NEOLITHIC LANDSCAPE
We were carrying a map that marked various Neolithic – New
Stone Age sites and monuments around Silbury Hill that can be
visited and are all a part of the Avebury World Heritage Site.
Between the years 2600- 2000 BC new Pottery, new Burial rites
and Metal work arrived in Britain which led to concentrated
building activity in the Avebury area. The Silbury Hill and the
Avebury Stone Circle were created around this time.
Later the Romans constructed a road and a town around the
foot of the prehistoric Silbury Hill . Further it is believed that
when there was a Viking invasion in this area then the Silbury
Hill was used as a defensive Post.
The Construction of the Silbury Hill
As we moved closer to the Hill we noticed that there is no
access to the hill and nothing to prevent erosion of plants and
archaeological remains. No wonder it is a Site of Special Scientific
interest for being a rare species rich Chalk Grassland! To this
day the cause for creating the Silbury Hill remains a mystery. It
appears as if the Mound was made over centuries when each
The Silbury Mound
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The Dayafter November 16-30, 2016
generation brought chalk and soil to put on the top of the
previous layer that grew bigger and bigger! It has been proven
that a pasture existed here before the Mound was created.
We turned towards the engrossing colored diagrams on a
Board close by that explained the building of the Silbury Hill. The
first diagram depicted people stripping the ground of top soil and
stones and creating a small gravel mound with material perhaps
brought from the River Kennet near its base. Next a16 meter
diameter ring filled with dark soil was made .People continued to
add soil and turf to the Chalk Mound till it was further enlarged
to the height and width of the Silbury – Hill that we see today.
LOVE FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS
The Silbury Hill has constantly aroused the curiosity of many
since ages to ‘uncover the royal burial of exceptional richnessTomb’ or it was thought to conceal a Temple. The Board imparted
additional information that by the 18th century at least 3 Tunnels
were separately dug to the centre of the Hill by Archaeologists
and Antiquarians.
The first Tunnel was dug in 1776 by Edward Drax that failed to
find a Central Burial at the end of the vertical shaft but discovered
fragments of Oak wood that indicated an Oakwood-tree or
Totem- Pole for rituals. Then Reverend Merewether and other
members of the Royal Archaeological Institute had a horizontal
Tunnel dug up and yielded the same result as before in 1849.
The last Tunnel was a major exploration sponsored and
televised by BBC with ‘full viewership’. It was led by Professor
Atkinson between 1968-70. The Tunnel was described by him
as a ‘highly coloured layered cake’ but yielded disappointment
too!
THE RATIONALE
Earlier i had read that the rationale of construction of the Silbury
Hill is hazy. According to Folklore it is the resting place of King
Sil and he is represented as a lifesize golden statue sitting on
miles of tranquility around the ancient mysterious mound
leading to other monuments around it