The Avebury Building and its Standing Stone

As you come down the main College drive, The Avebury building you see before you is named after the famous Wiltshire prehistoric henge site that can be found 20 miles (32km) behind you over your right shoulder.

Avebury is one of the largest Neolithic monuments in Europe and was renowned as a focal point for people to meet, exchange ideas, share cultures and build important links. We know from isotope analysis of feasting remains that people travelled from as far apart as the Shetland Islands off the north cost of Scotland, to as far south as the Carnac region in France. People travelled to Avebury from its earliest earthworks (dating from about 4,500 years ago) to gather socially, engage in politics and economy, venerate ancestors and support each other, trade and exchange ideas, feast, and conduct important ceremonial duties.

We see the College as a place people travel to so they can be enriched, share ideas and engage in debate, learn from the past and develop to become part of the future. In this building we have large refectory space for ‘feasting’ and socialising, pastoral areas for support and growth, and teaching areas to learn and share ideas; hence the name ‘The Avebury Building’.

The standing stone sited outside the Avebury building is a Sarsen stone; exactly the same as those found around Avebury Henge. Our magnificent stone was sourced from the Marlborough Downs (as the Avebury Stones were) where Sarsen stones naturally occur. Sarsen stones are silicate sandstone, or orthoquartzite, also known as Cenozoic Silicrete. They originally formed a glacial cap and were left behind in Wiltshire as the ice retreated north at the end of the last Ice Age, a process called periglacial solifluction. Sarsen, made of sand grains fused together by silica, is remarkably hard and heavy. Sarsen was prized in Prehistoric times for its indestructible, and some think magical, nature. It’s used for the Heel Stone and main trilithons in Stonehenge, but it’s the earlier Avebury monoliths that ours feels most akin to.

The stone, which represents those key elements of bringing people together, acts as a counterpoint to the graphene-enhanced printed ‘soundscape planter’ outside of the digital building at the other end of the site: prehistory to the very latest technology of today: again a theme covered by our rich curriculum.

If you stand to the left of the stone and look across the top of it you will see a ridge running over the top. This has been placed in alignment with the rising sun every September 1^st. This is a nod to the fact that many prehistoric monuments acted as celestial calendars and aligned different stones with key periods in the calendar year (such as the longest and shortest days). In our case, our stone aligns with the start of the academic year each year.

Avebury holds a special place for a number of staff in the College, but it was also one of the favourite sites of our previous Principal, Jim Grant, who sadly died in 2023. We hope the stone acts as a place of contemplation and a gate guardian for our amazing College.

Visit Avebury

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