Stukeley on the Sanctuary:
“This Overton-hill, from time immemorial, the country people have a high notion of. It was (alas, it was!) a very few years ago, crown’d with a most beautiful temple of the Druids. They still call it the sanctuary... The loss of this work I did not lament alone; but all the neighbours (except the person that gain’d the little dirty profit) were heartily griev’d for it. It had a beauty that touch’d them far beyond those much greater circles in Abury town.”
Perhaps the ‘Sanctuary’ was in fact a title made up by one of Stukeley’s romantic antiquarian friends. He wasn’t beyond a bit of exaggeration (and more than once took something Aubrey had said and pretended he’d thought of it first).
(quote from Aubrey Burl’s ‘Prehistoric Avebury’, 2nd ed. p133)