Durrington

At Durrington Walls, the trail cuts through a huge enclosed area where the builders of Stonehenge may have lived – the site is aligned to face sunset on the summer solstice – and on past Woodhenge, with its concentric circles of wooden posts marked now by concrete posts.

Magic circles: walking from Avebury to Stonehenge 2011

Born on 14 August 1936 in the village of Durrington, Wiltshire, Bannister enrolled at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts after two years' national service.

Trevor Bannister, Are You Being Served's Mr Lucas, dies aged 76 2011

By contrast, Durrington Walls, whose element was wood, was full of life and activity.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

So Stonehenge was first of all timbered, and even as stone gradually replaced wood from the Late Neolithic into the Bronze Age, it seems to have overlapped in time with wooden posts in the henge circle itself, and with the great timber henge at Durrington Walls.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

From about this time, 2900 BC, timbers began to be raised, first at Stonehenge and later, from 2500 BC, across to the east near the River Avon at Durrington Walls and Woodhenge.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

It is easy to underestimate, he says, the extraordinary numbers of people who would have congregated around the area of Durrington Walls at certain times of the year for feasting, exchange of goods and the immense communal work-effort that went into the long-term building of the monuments in the area.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

If stone commemorated the dead at Stonehenge, wood could have been the province of the living at Durrington Walls.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Sited in the Nymetbowethe bend in the holy riverthe henge was associated with the Yeo as Durrington Walls was with the Avon.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Wainwright uncovered the remains of two timber circles within Durrington Walls.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

Huge numbers of the Late Neolithic people who made Durrington Walls and its timber henges would have come together from some distance out of small, scattered groups at particular times of the year, and Edmonds thinks the feeling of being part of something bigger would have been of great importance in their lives.

Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009