sightlines

The photograph below shows the various horizons to Silbury from East Kennet longbarrow, The Sanctuary, The Longstones Barrow, Beckhampton and West Kennet longbarrow; copied from his drawings in Symbolic Landscapes - Paul Devereux..

The West Kennet longbarrow sightline of Silbury has to be viewed from the far end of the barrow.....

Walking down from East Kennet longbarrow, and according to my photo the sightline just touches the ledge.

Overton bronze age barrow; the top of Silbury glimpsed through the trees



Silbury seen from The Sanctuary, again a sightline can be discerned.

A view of Silbury from The Ridgeway

Silbury from Avebury Truesloe - a beautiful sightline - but was it meant?

Its in the last of the photographs that an uncomfortable truth is revealed, the fact is that it would have easier to build Silbury on the flat ground here, at Avebury Truesloe but the Avebury people chose otherwise. They chose to build near the foot of Waden Hill, near to where the river curves round to join the spring at Swallowhead. It would seem that they were focussing on water, this was the central hub for the mound. True as Devereux points out that Silbury links up with all the major monuments in the area from this point except of course for the great stone circle, (though of course even here the mound can be viewed from the Obelisk site.) but the emphasis is surely on water.

The truth is we do not know the final height of the mound, it could easily have been higher, and levelled at a later date by the Saxons. The same goes for the ledge that Devereux uses in his thesis, this also could have been dug out by the Saxons as fortifications.