“Now Krona has his house,” Gwilloc said. “Here he lives for ever.”
Both settlers and hunters looked with wonder and delight at the huge earthwork that they had made; and each knew that, from now on, this clearing on the high ground would be a holy place.
On Gwilloc’s instructions, the medicine man then sacrificed a lamb to the sun god, and a deer to the moon goddess of the hunters as well, so that nothing should be left undone as they laid the old chief to rest.
Often in the years that followed, when he had difficult decisions to make, Gwilloc would come alone to the clearing on the high ground and sit silently beside the long white tomb that he had made.
“Tell me, Krona, what I must do,” he would ask. At such times, it seemed to him that the old man’s spirit spoke to him quietly, giving him good advice; and he would return to the valley, strengthened.
This was not the only manifestation of Krona’s abiding presence: for often, when the summer thunder rolled over the ridges the people of Sarum would look at each other and say:
“That’s Krona, rumbling in his house.”
Years afterwards, when he in turn had chosen one of Krona’s sons to succeed him, Gwilloc marked out for himself and his family a similar though more modest tomb half a mile away, so that his spirit also should remain properly housed near the place where the rivers met.
And so began at Sarum the first building of the great earth tombs known as long barrows that are the distinguishing mark of Neolithic Britain and which have lasted for over five thousand years. From this time on, through generation after generation, other tombs would arise out of the ground in the Sarum area as farming communities cleared and settled the land. Sometimes the barrows became the tombs of families or groups, but others continued to be built as memorials to some individual great man. Their use spread further afield over Britain. As millennia passed they took on many forms – some round, some saucer-shaped. But it is on the high rolling downland of Salisbury Plain that to this day one of the greatest concentrations of all can be seen, where several hundred barrows overgrown with grass – brooding presences from the island’s ancient days – dot mile after mile of the landscape.
As Magri had predicted, not only did the settlers leave the northern valley in time and spread over many of the old hunting grounds, but other settlers, too, came from across the sea.
For the arrival of Krona was only one of many similar migrations, both to the island of Britain and to the more distant land of Ireland in the west, to which the settlers came in a steady trickle, braving the dangerous northern waters in their tiny craft. They built small wooden farmsteads, sowed corn or raised livestock, or, like those at Sarum, they did both. Their earthwork enclosures were used as meeting places, where cattle could be bartered, or sometimes for defence; they built barrows; they cleared the ridges for their flocks of squat brown sheep. Wherever they settled, they dominated the land. And out of this sporadic settlement grew the great civilisation known as the Neolithic culture of Britain.
It took about two thousand years.
This next two thousand years of Britain’s history are reasonably well documented by archaeologists. The barrows, settlements and implements of the farmers have been found in quantities which allow scholars to identify many varieties of culture. One area somewhat to the north of Sarum, has given its name – Windmill Hill – to the culture which produced surface flint quarries and causewayed earthworks. In Yorkshire to the north, the settlers found the lustrous stone called jet, which they used for making necklaces and ornaments. And in Cornwall, Wales and the Lake District, communities of miners developed, who cut into the volcanic rock of those regions and made axes superior to any seen before. Cut off from the rest of Europe, the island continued to develop its own rich and distinctive life.
It may be supposed, though it cannot be proved, that the island’s original and sparse population of hunters was absorbed by the gradual infiltration of these Neolithic farming folk. But although the land under agriculture could support much larger communities, the numbers of people were still very small. The population of settlers in the entire island by 2,000
B.C
. may have been no more than forty thousand souls – a huge increase from the old hunting community – but still leaving vast tracts of the country completely untouched. And who knows what primitive folk may have continued to roam, undisturbed, in these deserted wastes.
But the Sarum area in the heart of Wessex, with its upland soil which was so easy to till with the light plough, was not only agricultural – it became one of the natural centres of Neolithic Britain. The ridges and trackways along which hunters like Hwll had once travelled now brought traders from far away. From the south, traders from along the coast, or even across the sea, could come to the natural harbour under the shelter of the hill and make their way up stream to the place where the five rivers met. Situated at this junction of ridgeway and waterway, it was natural that Sarum should become a place of importance.
Around 2,500
B.C
., a further change occurred in Britain. Wonderful flat-bottomed pottery appeared, as it did elsewhere in Europe, which, on account of its shape, archaeologists have called Beaker, and which may be traced to sources in Iberia, and on the river Rhine. About this time also, the islanders acquired from across the sea first copper and then, soon after, the new alloy of tin and copper known as bronze. With this they began to make weapons, fine jewellery and many small implements. But bronze was soft. Though easy to work with, it did not revolutionise either warfare, or more important, agriculture. Its effect on the island was not profound.
But the glory of the island, and of Sarum in particular, during these long centuries was not made of metal, nor was metal important in its construction. The glory of the island was made of stone.
This was the magnificent collection of circular stone temples that rested on the high ground: the henges. Even today, they are awesome to look upon. Huge stones, each weighing many tons, were set up with a sharp, geometric precision on the bare ridges. Some of them cover several acres. Their engineering is extraordinary: and the power of those who could organise the huge teams of men needed to erect them is impressive. They stand as stately memorials (relegating even the barrows to insignificance) to the science and the ambition of the rulers of those days.
These henges are known nowhere else in northern Europe; but in Britain they are found all over the island, from Cornwall to the northern tip of Scotland. Their development lasted many centuries: they were first made of earth, then of wood and finally of stone. They were always circular, and their entrances usually oriented on an axis that pointed them towards the rising sun at the summer solstice. But that was only the beginning of the science of the henges, and to this day, archaeologists and mathematicians are still studying the religious and astronomical properties of these remarkable temples. The largest concentration of them lies in the area around Sarum. Thirty miles north west lay the huge henge at the village of Avebury. Nearer were several smaller ones including a fine henge made of wood. But the greatest and most impressive henge of all is Stonehenge on the high ground north of Sarum.
It was begun early – soon after 3,000
B.C
. At first it consisted of a circular earth wall enclosure, its entrance oriented on the rising sun at summer solstice. Just inside the earth wall, soon afterwards, was set up an inner circle of fifty-six posts, evenly spaced. There were also large stones framing the entrance. Around 2,100
B.C
. a stone circle was begun near the centre with bluestone rocks, It was one of the most remarkable feats of Neolithic engineering: for each of the sacred bluestones stood over six feet high, weighed four tons, and had been brought, at a time when the builders had not the benefit of the wheel, a distance of some two hundred and forty miles by sea, land and river from the distant Preseli Mountains of South Wales. The completed circle would have required over sixty of these stones.
But around 2,000
B.C
. something very strange occurred. For some reason, the building with the bluestones which was half completed, suddenly stopped. The bluestones were removed from the site. And then, miraculously a new building was begun. It had a stately avenue that led from the entrance between earthwork walls for six hundred yards across the rolling high ground. Its gigantic grey stones dwarfed the previous bluestones. Its design and its magnificence was unlike anything that the island had ever seen before.
THE HENGE
2,000
B.C
.
There were still a few hours before the dawn.
In the centre of the great temple of Stonehenge, the six priests waited expectantly for their orders: it was some time since the High Priest had last spoken.
To an observer who did not understand the secret workings of the henge, the scene would have seemed strange indeed. The priests who stood respectfully at their posts were each dressed in a simple long robe woven from undyed lambs’ wool, their feet encased in sturdy leather boots to protect against the cold, and their heads, except for a V-shaped wedge of hair with its point between the eyes, shaved bare. In their hands each priest held two or three long sticks with pointed tips.
Apart from the priests, there was only one other person in the henge: in the gateway, bound with strong leather ropes and long ago terrified into silence, lay a young criminal who was to be sacrificed to the sun god at dawn.
Dluc, the High Priest, did not seem to be aware of any of them. His tall, rangy figure in its long grey robes stood as motionless as a stone. In his right hand he held his ceremonial staff the top of which, carved in bronze and decorated with gold, was in the elegant shape of a swan – the symbol of the sun god. In his left hand was a large ball of twine made of flax. His gaunt, clean-shaven face was impassive: his eyes were fixed on a distant point on the horizon.
He had good reason to be preoccupied. For some time now it had been clear that – unless the gods could be pacified – the ancient territory of Sarum and its sacred grounds were doomed to destruction. But what could he do to avert it? And how much time did he have?
“If Krona should fall sick . . .” he murmured to himself. It was a terrible thought, which he tried to dismiss from his mind – but it would not go away.
Imperceptibly his fingers tightened round his staff.
But there were other duties to perform and much work to be done that night. Breaking his painful reverie, he suddenly pointed the staff at four different spots in the circle and gave a curt order:
“Place the markers.”
The priests hurried to the places he had indicated and at each one, drove a stick into the ground. This night, as every night, the astronomer priests of Stonehenge were busy measuring the heavens.
There was a half moon high in the cold autumn sky. It was a night full of stars. The dew on the bare ridges, which swept majestically away on every side, caused them to shimmer in the moonlight.
On every ridge of the sacred region, chalk barrows jutted out of the turf – some long, others round – pale forms which glimmered, even from miles away, like ghostly ships, frozen upon a vast unmoving sea. For the dead watched over the living at Sarum, and were honoured accordingly.
The sacred grounds extended for many miles across this rolling landscape; they contained not only burial mounds, but also small temples of wood and earthwork enclosures – the monuments of centuries during which this high ground had been reserved as an area apart. No place on the island was more hallowed, and pilgrims would come down the chalk ridgeways many days’ journey to visit the sacred plateau.
At the centre of these precincts, on a gently rolling slope, stood the magic henge.
It was huge: a circular chalk bank, three hundred and twenty feet across and surrounded by a deep ditch, enclosed the inner sanctum. This was unusual: for normally the ditch of the island henges lay inside their banks, not outside. “But we are different,” its priests proudly declared. From the entrance on the north east side, a broad avenue between earth walls cut a straight, ceremonial path for six hundred yards across the landscape. At the point where it joined the sanctum, a pair of huge grey stones formed the gateway through which only the priests and their sacrificial victims ever passed. Within, there were two small mounds used for astronomical observations, an outer circle of fifty-six wooden markers which the present High Priest had carefully restored, and a double inner circle – as yet only half completed – of standing stones. These were the sacred bluestones.
The henge was already eight hundred years old and it was a place of mystic significance. Not only was it the site at which the priests made the ritual sacrifices to the sun god and the moon goddess: it had important astronomical properties central to the ordering of all activities in the huge territory of Sarum and its great chief Krona.
And though there were larger henges, like the huge complex to the north west known as Avebury, where a neighbouring chief reigned over a lesser people, Dluc always reminded his priests: “The proportions of our henge are better; and we are superior astronomers, too.”