West Kennet Long Barrow ★★

The barrow's main entrance, guarded by standing stones (Photo by Ben Cremin)
The barrow's main entrance, guarded by standing stones
The barrow's main entrance, guarded by standing stones, West Kennet Long Barrow, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Ben Cremin)
The barrow from above, West Kennet Long Barrow, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo courtesy of English Heritage)
The stone-lined passage of the tomb, West Kennet Long Barrow, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Ark3pix)
The barrow, West Kennet Long Barrow, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Neil Howard)
The side entrance, West Kennet Long Barrow, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Ethan Doyle White)
Artifacts excavated from the West Kennet Long Barrow on display at the Wiltshire Museum, Devizes. The items displayed are, from top to bottom: four bone beads; three bead necklaces; a chalk bead and two bone scoops; two Peterborough Ware bowls; four bone pins; a "Windmill Hill bowl"; and four flint scrapers., West Kennet Long Barrow, Salisbury and Stonehenge (Photo by Pasicles)

A 5,600-year-old Neolithic passage tomb near Avebury

For 1,000 years, starting around 3650 BC, at least 46 people were entombed in the five burial chmabers of this oblong artificial limestone hill raised on the grassy chalk countryside of Wiltshire.

Around 2,000 BC, the passage was filled in and the entrance blocked with Sarsen stones. Why? No one knows.

Maybe it's my love of Tolkien, but calling these passage tombs "barrows" makes them just that more exciting to weave past the uneven flat stone monoliths guarding the entrance like so many broken teeth, hunker down, and crawl into the stone-lined 5,600-year-old tomb imagining what ghosts (or barrow-wights) might lurk therein.

West Kennet Long Barrow Tours
 
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