The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

The Mother's Jam

Natural Rock Feature

Fieldnotes

There's so much to see on the Avebury landscape that you really shouldn't make do with the OS Landranger map. Splash out on Explorer 157. It's twice the scale, so you can easily find everything, and they've coincidentally put Avebury in the centre. If you have this map you'll find otherwise fiddly things like the Mother's Jam really easily.

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Head east out of Avebury on the trackway that was, until 200 years ago, the main London to Bath road. It takes you over the Ridgeway, across the top of the hill, and then you cross a mad horse track and go downhill, with the trees of Delling Copse on your left.

And as you go down, you see them on your right. recumbent sarsens, littered across the ground. At the valley floor turn right and walk along. And there it is, the vast oracle stone of the Mother's Jam. The hill to the west is bare, except for it's cleft with a trickle of stones leading to the biggest of all at the bottom. The slope to the east is covered in sarsen. It is totally weird. You cannot believe this is natural, it feels so arranged, so ordained.

The few bushes and trees that grow there are weird to, all intense and twisty.

This would be worth visiting just to see the place where the Avebury stones came from. But it would also be worth visiting even if it were not. The weird crackling magic is tangible here, every time you visit.

Truly, the strangest and most intense place in all the natural world I have ever seen.



The centre - the big stone - is at grid ref 135708
Posted by Merrick
12th April 2002ce

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