Avebury & the Marlborough Downs forum 64 room
Image by Littlestone
Avebury & the Marlborough Downs

Weedon Hill

close
more_vert
nigelswift N
nigelswift Feb 20, 2007 10:17:29
Replying to Littlestone

"Richard Atkinson’s discovery of postholes, associated with iron nails and a coin of Æthelred of ‘about 1010’, on the shelf of the upper terrace of the hill indicate a fortified site (Atkinson 1970, 313–14) suggesting that the name Silbury is best interpreted as OE sele-burh meaning ‘fortified structure or hall’."
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:QPqP_AVIEp8J:www.english-heritage.org.uk/upload/pdf/avebury_agenda_2iv.pdf+%22Anglo-Saxon+Chronicle%22+abury&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&ie=UTF-8

M moss
moss Feb 20, 2007 11:46:02
Replying to nigelswift

Checking back on Sweet...sele = hall, sele-dream = festivity ;)
seld = hall or seat. So that is where Atkinson is getting his info from.
Bonney article. in WAM 61 Pagan saxon boundaries and burials in Wiltshire; quoted in Josh Pollard's Avebury.
Pollard also gives Waden's Hill pagan name as weoh-dun meaning idol, holy place or shrine (earliest ref for name 1639). Interesting, push back to R..... times and there seems to be three wells around Silbury that could have been sacred, the R.... settlement on Waden Hill being a tourist place for this sacred area perhaps/ or posting station for horses between Verlucio and Cunetio. Considering the saxon poem The Ruins, it could well be speculated that Silbury held its special powers thro both these periods.....