Friday 24 February 2012

The Sarsen Bridge by the Bluestonehenge in West Amesbury

The Sarsen Bridge by *tewkes-ape on deviantART: "
The Sarsen Bridge by *tewkes-ape on deviantART"


Location: Amesbury, Wiltshire
This bridge is next to the site of Bluestonehenge which was a henge that stood at the terminus of the famous Stonehenge Avenue. Due to the amount of bluestone found at this site, particularly in the locations of standing stones that once stood at this site it is thought that some (but not all!) of the bluestone pillars (the smaller inner circle) at stonehenge once stood at this site.

In the first year of excavation of this site archaeologists originally thought that there might have been sarsen here (the material used for the large trilathons at stonehenge.) It wasn't for three weeks that they realised a massive lump of it was helping to support this bridge.


The Bluestonehenge archaeological team take up positions in the stoneholes, with the partially excavated henge curve in front of them. The small wooden overbridge and trackway to the Avon River is seen to the top left of the picture (Aerial-Cam photo, by Adam Stanford).

4 comments:

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  2. Having a problem with photo bucket, try:

    http://s969.photobucket.com/albums/ae179/WizardoftheEdge/?action=view&current=P3070688.jpg

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  3. Interesting, do you have a location for that?

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  4. Sadly it's very vague. Somewhere on the South Mill meadow area, before you get to the demolished Workhouse. I have been reading John Chandler and Peter Goodhugh's history of Amesbury. There's an interesting bit quoting a 1639 perambulation of the Earldom manor ... "down to the middle of the river, so taking in Kings Island, and thence down the avon to a stone which lieth in the middle of the river..." Looked up where King's Island is on Google Earth. That's a significant little island that no one knows about. If it was around in the BA it would be quite significant, especially given its name.

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