How Early Twentieth-Century Modernity Gave Avebury Its Folklore

At the very start of the twentieth century the neolithic monument at Avebury – the world’s largest stone circle – consisted of just thirty-one stones, with fifteen fallen and sixteen standing. Interest in the site was confined largely to specialist antiquarian audiences and, most curiously, the site was not attached to any popular folkloric legends as to how the colossal megaliths came to stand in the village. Then something shifted. This talk will explore how the early twentieth century saw archaeologists, writers and philosophers become increasingly interested in ancient spaces like Avebury and advocate for embodied, immersive interactions with these sites which emphasised the importance of drawing connections between ancient landmarks. This phenomenon was born out of a distinctively twentieth-century context, as modern ideas and technologies converged to shift artistic and academic conceptions of the site. Drawing on the work of archaeologists, folklorists, and writers including R. Hippisley Cox, Edith Olivier, H.G Wells and Maud Cunnington, we will explore how this movement created a new way of engaging with the Avebury landscape which prioritised human interaction and led to a collection of encounters with the site which came to provide Avebury with the tradition it had always lacked. These same concepts came to influence archaeological investigations as well as heritage preservation schemes, directly shaping the physical and cultural space we encounter at Avebury today.

Niamh Lawlor is a third-year PhD student at the University of Birmingham working in partnership with the Midlands4Cities / AHRC doctoral training award. Lawlor’s research explores creative responses to pre-historic and ancient monuments in early twentieth-century writing, employing a research practice which has involved fieldwork in the UK and Ireland. Lawlor has also worked on projects including The Avebury Papers, an AHRC funded project working to digitise the early twentieth-century archive held at Avebury, as well as acting as a Research Assistant for the Arts of Place research centre based at the University of Birmingham.