Did Aubrey Discover the Aubrey Holes?

John Aubrey deserves immense credit for putting Stonehenge on a scholarly footing. In 1666, armed with surveying tools and a sharp eye, he produced one of the earliest accurate plans of the monument—far more precise than anything before. His drawing (from Monumenta Britannica, Bodleian Library MS. Top. gen. c. 24, fol. 64) shows the sarsens, trilithons, bank, ditch, and the Avenue with commendable detail for the era. He correctly dated the site as pre-Roman (rejecting Danish or Roman attributions), linked such circles to ancient British "Druid temples," and treated monuments like Avebury and Stonehenge as worthy of systematic recording rather than folklore.

That plan includes five small depressions marked just inside the bank. Aubrey described them as "cavities in the ground from whence one may conjecture stones ... were taken", interpreting them as sockets where megaliths had been removed—perhaps hinting at a lost outer circle. He noted these amid broader conjectures about missing stones and the site's layout, including the Avenue.

In his honour, when William Hawley excavated half the ring of 56 pits in the 1920s (spotted via probing by Robert Newall), archaeologists named them the Aubrey Holes. It's a fitting tribute to the man who first drew systematic attention to irregularities in that zone.

But did he discover them? Not quite.

Aubrey saw and recorded only five surface features, visible hollows he linked to stone removal. The true Aubrey Holes (the complete prehistoric ring, dating to ~3000 BCE, later used for bluestones/posts and cremation burials) had been backfilled millennia earlier. Their upper fills (with sarsen chips and later deposits) meant they weren't open cavities in the 17th century; they were invisible without digging. Scholarly analysis, notably Mike Pitts in his 1981 Nature letter ("Stones, pits and Stonehenge," vol. 290, pp. 46–47), argues Aubrey's five depressions were likely unrelated, perhaps later disturbances, small post sockets, or other surface oddities, not the ancient pits now bearing his name.

So: Aubrey didn't excavate, map, or fully reveal the 56-pit circle. He vaguely noted a handful of surface dips in passing, as part of a holistic survey. The real "discovery" came 250+ years later with targeted digging.

Yet the naming is spot-on recognition. Aubrey pioneered antiquarian fieldwork, accurate surveying, and the idea that these monuments deserved serious study. Without his plan and notes, later work might have taken longer to contextualize the site. He bridged folklore and science, and his curiosity laid groundwork for modern archaeology.

In short: No, he didn't discover the Aubrey Holes, but he earned the eponym more than most, he was the man who looked at Stonehenge in 1666 and saw something worth measuring, drawing, and wondering about.