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Ancient monument

West Kennet Long Barrow

Near Avebury, Wiltshire

A great stone tomb you can walk inside, older than Stonehenge.

West Kennet is a long earthen mound with stone chambers at one end. It was used for burials for about a thousand years, and the remains of dozens of people were found inside.

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When
c. 3650 BC
Where
51.4088, -1.8508
Group
Circles & monuments

Visiting

English Heritage, free. A 15-minute uphill walk.

Cover of The Ledger of Lost Britain by Cale Mills
From the book

The Ledger of Lost Britain

The earliest monuments that most of us can still walk into are not circles. They are long mounds of earth and stone, built to hold the dead.

The Romans arrived in AD 43. For most people that is where the history of Britain begins. But by the time the legions landed, people had already been living on these islands for thousands of years. They had hunted, farmed, mined flint, dragged stones across the country, raised a hill by hand, and buried their dead in great tombs. They left no written words. What they left was the ground itself. Every place in this book can be visited, or has been dug up, or is in a museum.

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