BURY is also supposed to have been a Druid temple, and of much earlier date than Stonehenge. Two lines of upright stones branched off from two openings through a bank and ditch, and extended for more than a mile. That running to the south and south-east from the great temple terminated in an elliptical range of upright stones. There were two hundred stones in it. The western avenue, extending nearly a mile and a half towards Beckhampton, consisted of two hundred stones, and ended in a single stone. It has been thought that these avenues running in curved lines were emblematical of the serpent worship of the Druids. On the high ground to the south of Abury within the avenues of stones is a most remarkable monument of the British period - Silbury Hill. It has been variously thought to have been one of the component parts of the grand temple at Abury, or to be a sepulchral mound raised over the ashes of a king or archdruid.

It is the largest mound of the kind to be found in England, the next in size being Marlborough Mount. There is no extant account of Silbury. The local tradition is that King Sil, or Zel (as the country people call him), is buried under it on horse-back, and that the mound was raised while a posset of milk was setting. But the name really signifies "the great hill."

Silbury stands on as much ground as Stonehenge, and is 170 feet high; it covers five acres of ground, and is most probably, as the people of the place believe, a huge barrow in which some great personage has been buried; for the ancient Britons, as well as their descendants, liked to sleep under the shadow of their god's house.