Kennet Avenue

Kennet Avenue or West Kennet Avenue is a prehistoric site in the English county of Wiltshire. It was an avenue of two parallel lines of stones 25m wide and 2.5 km in length, which ran between the Neolithic sites of Avebury and The Sanctuary.

Kennet Avenue

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Kennet Avenue in 2014
Location	Wiltshire, United Kingdom
Part of	Avebury Section of Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites
Criteria	Cultural: (i), (ii), (iii)
Reference	373bis-002
Inscription	1986 (10th Session)
Extensions	2008
Coordinates	51°25′23″N 1°50′53″W
Location of Kennet Avenue in Wiltshire

Excavations by Stuart Piggott and Alexander Keiller in the 1930s indicated that around 100 pairs of standing stones had lined the avenue, dated to around 2200 BC from finds of Beaker burials beneath some of them.^[1] Many stones have fallen or are missing, however. A second avenue, called Beckhampton Avenue, led west from Avebury towards Beckhampton Long Barrow.^[2]

Maud Cunnington righted some of the stones during her work there in the early 20th century. Keiller restored the northern third of the avenue in 1934–1935.^[3] There are currently 27 upright stones and 37 concrete pillars marking original stone locations.^[1]

The avenue is within the Avebury section of the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. It is in the freehold ownership of the National Trust, and a scheduled monument in English Heritage guardianship.^[4] It is managed by the National Trust on behalf of English Heritage, and the two organisations share the cost of managing and maintaining the property.^[5]

Occupation site

The West Kennet Avenue occupation site, discovered by Keiller in 1934 and re-excavated by Joshua Pollard and Mark Gillings from 2013–15, are the remains of Neolithic settlement activity.^[6] The more recent excavations recovered 16,399 pieces of worked flint with dating ranging from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age.^[7]

Images

• 
  'Male' and 'Female' stones in the Avenue
• 
  A megalith showing repairs