Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/303

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seventeen feet square, reduced in 1722 to forty, of which only seventeen were standing, and about forty-three feet asunder, measuring from the centre of each stone. Within this great circle were two lesser, each consisting of two concentric circles, the outermost of thirty, the inner of twelve, stones of the same size, and at the same distances from each other as the others. The southernmmost of these circular temples had a simile stone in its centre twenty-one feet high, the northernmost a cell or kebla, formed of three stones placed with an ob- tuse angle towards each opening to the north-east, before which lay the altar, as at Stonelienge. Both the.- e 1 emples were almost entire about 1 7 1 6. Of the north temple outer circle remained only three 'tones standing 172:, and six down; of the south temple fourteen, half of them standing. In the south end 01 the line connecting the centres of these two temples is a middle-sized stone with a hole in it, perhaps to fasten the victim to. Numbers of these stones have been broken by burning to build houses with, others buried to gain the ground they stood on for pasture. The two original entrances into tills stupendous work were from the south- east ami west, and had each an avenue of stones. The first of these, or Kennet avenue, was a mile ion^r, of erne hundred tmd ninety stones on a side,

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