Reconstructing the West Kennett Long Barrow

The West Kennett Long Barrow rests atop a high ridge overlooking fields about a mile to the south of the Avebury henge in Wiltshire. Built in about 3650 BCE, the Barrow is a tomb-shrine, that is a structure in which the remains of the dead were placed which was (and still is) also a place of reverence for the living. It consists of a large earthen mound shaped like an extremely elongated triangle over 300 feet (100 meters) long. This would originally have been topped with the local white chalk, so would have shone out like a beacon, visible for miles around when the Sun illuminated it.
At the wider end of the mound is an entranceway that leads into a corridor flanked by four side chambers and leading to a larger rear chamber. All are constructed from large sarsen stones brought from stone fields only a few miles away. The gaps between the sarsens are filled in with smaller stones, in some places laid like dry-stone walling. These were brought from much further away.
Its initial phase of use as a tomb seems to have been very short, perhaps as little as a single generation. The skeletons of about 45 men, women and children were placed in the chambers. All seem to have first been exposed to the elements, or buried until all the flesh was gone from their bones, on Windmill Hill, a massive hilltop site of concentric banks and ditches a mile to the north-east.
It then remained open for more than a thousand years, during which it is assumed that people continued to visit the Barrow, enter its chambers and commune with the ancestors whose remains were interred there. The narrow passageway and small chambers suggest that very few people would ever have entered at any one time. Larger, communal ceremonies involving fires and feasting may have taken place in the open forecourt at the front of the tomb-shrine.
Eventually, around 2000 BCE, the chambers and passage were filled with rubble, earth and chalk. Some time later, a massive sarsen blocking stone (below) was erected in front of the former entrance, completely blocking it off.
The rear chamber was excavated in 1859 by psychiatrist and archaeologist, Dr John Thurnam (1810-1873), who was Medical Superintendent of Wiltshire County Lunatic Asylum in nearby Devizes. He found a thick layer of chalk rubble containing bone, flint and pottery. When this was dug away, he found the skull of one child and five adult burials.
A thorough excavation of the whole site took place almost a century later, in 1955-6. This was overseen by the archaeologist, Stuart Piggott, author of many books, including The Druids (Thames & Hudson, 1968), which is very good on the archaeology but extremely rude about modern Druids; and fellow archaeologist, Richard Atkinson, who wrote what was, for many years, the definitive popular guide to Stonehenge, in which he was at pains to dismiss any idea that ancient Druids might have had anything to do with the monument.
On digging into the mound, they found that the passageway and some of the chambers had collapsed in on themselves. In order to fully excavate, it was therefore necessary to dismantle the tomb-shrine stone by sarsen stone. Each one was carefully numbered and its exact placing recorded. The idea was that they would all be put back in place at the end of the dig only upright, as they would have been when the Barrow was first built. Unfortunately, this was not done throughout, so some of the stones as they now stand are not in their original places. Also, the Ministry of Works insisted that the entrance to the passageway should be left open for ease of access to tourists.
The massive blocking stone that had been placed in front of the entrance in around 2000 BCE was also to be left in place but with a stepped walkway constructed around it, again for the convenience of visitors.
The entrance originally had a smaller sarsen inserted into it leaving a narrow hole through which a single person might crawl to access the passage and chambers. Before the blocking stone was erected, the morning Sun at the equinoxes in March and September would have shone through this hole, down the passage and illuminated the large rear chamber, filling it with light. Thanks to decisions made during the reconstruction, this effect no longer occurs.
On visiting the tomb-shrine, you will note that the rear chamber has no covering sarsen stone. Most tomb-shrines of this period were completed with a massive capstone that acted as a roof for the largest chamber, sometimes for the whole monument. At West Kennett, no capstone was found over the rear chamber or part of the passageway. The reconstruction settled for a concrete roof with a skylight in it to illuminate the interior of the rear chamber.
This morning, thinking about the Barrow because of its equinoctial alignment (the spring equinox having occurred yesterday), it struck me that the reason for the absence of a capstone for the rear chamber could well be because it was re-used as the blocking stone at the entrance. If you were going to block off the passageway, it would be far easier to use a stone that was already on site rather than dragging a new one, weighing several tons, from the stone-fields to the east of Avebury.
If I were in charge of the National Trust, English Heritage or Wessex Archaeology, I would remove the concrete roof, replace it with the sarsen blocking stone, then rebuild the entrance with its original narrow crawl-space, thereby allowing the equinoctial sunrise illumination of the rear inner chamber to be seen again as it was 5500 years ago. As with the midwinter illumination of the rear chamber at the New Grange tomb-shrine in Ireland, the West Kennett equinox light show could be broadcast live on the internet for those unwilling to crawl inside or unable to get to the site. Maybe we could also hold celebratory feasts for the ancestors again in the forecourt, bringing archaeology to life whilst honouring our ancestors. Hey. It gets my vote!
The plan below shows the approximate path of the light entering the passageway from the equinoctial sunrise. The beam seems to reflect off the last stone on the left of the passageway before entering the rear chamber. There is, however, some margin for error as the horizon to the east of the Barrow is far from perfectly flat, so the light beam may be off by a few degrees.
Even with the dubious reconstruction, the removal of all trace of ancestral remains and the lack of the equinoctial effect, the West Kennett Long Barrow retains a numinous, spiritual quality and many who visit still feel the presence of the ancestors there. Hale to the Ancestors and the Old Gods of our lands! Hale and blessed be!
Greywolf /|\