INFOMAN

SILBURY AND EDWARD DUKE’S LINE

1. INTRODUCTION

“It is a curious fact that lunatics never will believe that they are insane,” wrote the Wiltshire Trust, reviewing The Druidical Temples Of The County Of Wilts in 1846. The lunatic in question who had written the offending work was Rev Edward Duke, an antiquary who lived at Lake House in Wilsford cum Lake, near Amesbury (Grid Ref: SU 1338). A century or so later it became domicile to Sting and family, although on 5 April 1912 it had been gutted by a fire and completely rebuilt. 

Rev. Edward Duke, M.A. F.A.S. F.L.S. was baptised on 24 September 1779 at Hungerford. He went to Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and got his MA in 1807. He was also a magistrate, and a member of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. He died, 6 years after publishing his theory, on 24 August 1852. His widow, Harriet moved to 15 Camden Crescent, Bath, and died 25 January 1873. They are both buried at Wilsford.

Duke's unsympathetically received theory of druidic temples inspired his reviewers to say, “It has seldom been our unhappy fate to wade through a book in the pages of which we could find less instruction of any kind, or a larger number of the most puerile absurdities…”

The Wiltshire Trust attributed some of the blame for the book to the exuberance of youth and seemed of the belief that its author was a naive young man, rather than a retired cleric. They may have been under the impression that the author was 32-year old Edward Duke Jnr. He was born 6 December 1814 at Ivy Church (baptised 11 July 1815, Wilsford) and became curate of St Edmund’s, Salisbury, and of Wilsford. He died 11 October 1895 at Wickham Rectory, and is also buried at Wilsford.

Duke’s theory was that the Druids had built a giant planetarium in the land, with temples, representing all the planets known to ancient man, in apparent orbit around Earth. In his diagram the Moon is bizarrely depicted in a separate orbit around the Sun. Duke has not made note of any occurrence at the South node, so this representation is pure conjecture on his part.

He placed Silbury Hill in Wiltshire as the druidic mystic centre which represented Earth, and depicted the traditional planets at temples situated along what would now be called a ley-line (the Duke Line) which is at 275 degrees (5 degrees Capricorn), where 0 degrees is West (0 degrees Aries). 

Planets with male associations such as Mars were shown at the South point of the orbit where they crossed his ley-line (South node), and those that were traditionally female like Venus were shown at the North node. The exception to this was the Sun, a masculine "planet" which is incorrectly represented at its North node. This and the Moon's orbit as depicted by Duke lead me to wonder if he originally considered Silbury Hill to represent the Sun, in which case Avebury would become Earth, a feminine planet which would correctly be placed to the North of the centre, and which would be orbited by the Moon. Then, when he realised that his Druids would not have placed the Sun at the centre he swapped them around without making any further modifications.

In The Druidical Temples Of The County Of Wilts (dedicated 13^th August 1846, Lake House, Amesbury), he wrote “that our ingenious ancestors portrayed on the Wiltshire Downs, a Planetarium or stationary Orrery, if this anachronism may be allowed me, located on a meridianal line, extending north and south, the length of sixteen miles; that the planetary temples thus located, seven in number, will if put into motion, be supposed to revolve around Silbury Hill as the centre of this grand astronomical scheme; that thus Saturn, the extreme planet to the south, would in his orbit describe a circle with a diameter of thirty-two miles; that four of these planetary temples were constructed of stone, those of Venus, the Sun, the Moon, and Saturn; and the remaining three of earth, those of Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter, resembling the “Hill Altars” of Holy Scripture; that the Moon is represented as a satellite of the Sun, and, passing round in an epicycle, is thus supposed to make her monthly revolution, while the Sun himself pursues his annual course in the first and nearest concentric orbit, and is thus successively surrounded by those also of the planets, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; that these planetary temples were all located at due distances from each other; that the relative proportions of those distances correspond with those of the present received system; and that, in three instances, the sites of these temples bear in their names at this day plain and indubitable record of their primitive dedication.”

Duke took some considerable poetic licence with his locations and his distances, and his “meridian” ley-line does not run due North/South as he claims (although another true meridian ley-line does also pass through Silbury Hill). Furthermore, we now know that his belief, widespread at the time, that the Druids were the creators of all these stone and earth monuments, was completely wrong, the truth being infinitely more marvellous and strange, and impossible to completely discover. 

However, it is an intriguing theory and there are significant sites at more or less all the places they were required to be according to his theory. Despite the propensity of these monuments, especially prior to the industrial revolution, the likelihood of this happening by chance is very small, especially as two of his “temples” are Stonehenge and Avebury, two of the most important monuments in Europe.

His observation that these locations all fall on a straight line and the significance he ascribes to this predates Alfred Watkins’ rediscovery of ley-lines by nearly a century, and as such he must be afforded due credit.

 Edward Duke's Sketch Of "that portion of the County which includes the Temples described"

2. EDWARD DUKE’S TEMPLE'S NODAL POINTS

EARTH: SILBURY HILL

All Edward Duke’s temples radiate from Silbury Hill, which lies at the centre of the whole 4,700-year old Avebury complex, uniting Avebury Henge, the Sanctuary, both Avenues, the Kennet Long Barrows and Swallowhead Springs. The great natural Silbury Prime Meridian ley line runs through it. 

The true age of these Neolithic monuments was greatly underestimated at Duke’s time, as the Druids arrived thousands of years later. It is unlikely that they appropriated the structures for their own dramatic purposes, as they worshipped in sacred forest groves and had no need of stone monuments. It was the seventeenth century antiquary John Aubrey who connected these stone artifacts with the Druids. Roman writers such as Julius Caesar had written of a Celtic priesthood, flourishing at the time of their arrival, 1,500 years after the last stone monuments had been constructed, but had not linked them to Avebury or other similar sites, which by then had probably been in ruins for hundreds of years. Celtic society came into existence in Britain only after 300 BC.

As recently as 1965, Ross Nichols (b. 26 June 1902, Norfolk), chosen chief of the Druidic Association, was championing Duke’s “Axis of Powers” in his book The Time Stones Of The Druids.

Silbury Hill is thought to date from between 2800 and 2400 BC (the New Stone Age). Topped in turf, its shape is much unchanged from that time. This and several other remarkable British and Irish megalithic structures predate any evidence of astronomical and mathematical cultures elsewhere in the world. In The Silbury Treasure, Michael Dames shows that Silbury Hill, which is aligned with midwinter and midsummer solstices, was built on a ley line that runs from Avebury Henge’s west entrance to Milk Hill, and indicates that “all full moons and all mid-day suns reach highest altitude on this line.” To the Neolithic Wessex man it could well have represented the centre of the Earth itself, dedicated perhaps to Gaia, the Earth Goddess.

The name Silbury (Seleburgh in the 13^th Century) may derive from Sul (or “Suil”, meaning “eye”), a goddess venerated by the Britons; or Sol, the Roman god. "Sol", of course, means "Sun", so it would be easy to argue that Silbury represented the Sun rather than the Earth. 

Duke quotes Cooke from an “anonymous and brief account of Abury, Stonehenge, &c. principally combined from the works of Stukeley, and printed by B.C. Collins of Salisbury”: “The name of it is corrupted by the country people, and was either written or pronounced Silbarrow; and then it signifies no more than the peaceful grave, or, which is more likely, it was called SIL BARROW, the large or elevated barrow.”

THE SUN (North Node) AND MOON (North Node): AVEBURY

Lord Avebury (b. 29 September 1928) owns Avebury and Silbury Hill at the time of writing. His grandfather, the archaeologist and prehistorian Sir John Lubbock bought it when the henge stones included in the lot were about to be used as rubble by a builder. He introduced the Ancient Monuments Bill to safeguard our heritage, and gave to them the lease of the hill and henge land.

Duke writes that, “The temples of Sun and Moon, the temples of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are located respectively at distances of 1,3,4,6,9,16 miles from Earth. The diameter of their respective orbits…would be therefore 2,6,8,12,18,32 miles. The temples are all placed on a right line, due North and South.”

Avebury, approximately 1 mile from Silbury Hill, therefore represents both the Sun and the Moon, and within its stone enclosure there are two stone circles, known as North Temple, representing the Moon, and South Temple, for the Sun. Both lie slightly to the East of Duke's line, as if they were on his “meridian”, and are situated diagonally to each other, not North and South.

Avebury may originally have been a small town in the Stone Age. Recent excavations have revealed evidence that several hundred people lived within the sites with their sheep and cattle, the stone circles having been added later to a part of the settlement. The archaeologist Aubrey Burl has said, "I think that Avebury's earthwork is very similar in size to several others in Wiltshire and Dorset and, almost certainly, I think they are settlement sites. This is because of their size but also because the remains of timber structures, probably houses, have been found."

MERCURY (South Node): WALKER’S HILL

Walker’s Hill (or Walkway Hill) is near Alton Barnes. A large Neolithic long barrow, 200 ft by 20 ft, caps it, known as Adam’s Grave. This is Duke’s temple to Mercury. It used to be called Wodnes beorb (Woden’s Barrow) and aligns to the midwinter sunrise. It was conjectured by Sir RC Hoare to be a Hill Altar, or sacred mound, as at nearby Marden (now destroyed), which is Duke’s Mars site. 

There was a probable Woden cult above the Vale of Pewsey. Woden was the Teutonic or Norse principal god, who granted heroism and victory and decided man's fate, and was the god of spiritual life. From Woden comes the fourth day of the week, Wednesday, which is Mercredi in French, Mercury dies in Latin, Mercury being the Roman equivalent.

3-4 skeletons were discovered in Adam’s Grave in 1860. There is a legend that if you run around it 7 times, a giant emerges. A battle between Upper Thames Saxons and West Saxons, led by the Saxon kings Ine and Ceolred, was fought there in 715 AD.

The Ridgeway footpath passes between Walker’s Hill and Knap Hill and the Wansdyke crosses it, also passing Tan Hill, Adam’s Grave and Knap Hill.

The adjacent Knap Hill is surmounted by a Neolithic causewayed camp or enclosure c. 3500 BC, which could be the oldest known communal dwelling in the country. It overlooks East Field, a site of great pagan significance, and reputedly contains treasure. 

VENUS (North Node): WINTERBOURNE BASSETT

At Winterbourne Bassett stone circle, 4 miles north of Avebury, Edward Duke infers from the remains an outer circle of 30 stones (a cycle of days of the month) and an inner circle of maybe 12 or 19 stones (representing either months, or the Metonic cycle). The half-dozen or so of these stones which remain lie peacefully in a recumbent position providing rock pools. They are also connected by another ley line to a stone circle in Coate, Swindon, via nearby Broad Hinton church.

The pictures were taken on 19 August 1999.