A Journey to Avebury is the name of a short silent film made by Derek Jarman made in 1971. Shot in wobbly Super 8, and saturated with burnt orange hues, it has an otherworldly eldritch atmosphere that is hard to describe. Suffice to say it is hardly be the sort of thing that the then English Tourist Board might have chosen to promote the stone-encircled Wiltshire village. Too painterly and surreal by half for such considerations, the film is both beautiful and slightly disturbing, and has the feel of a psychedelic adventure about to go wrong. With wind-blown trees and shifting clouds against Martian skies, A Journey to Avebury evokes the strangeness of a landscape that is already inherently deeply weird. The weirdness owes much to the implacable monoliths that dominate the village, although Jarman’s focus on the rolling Wiltshire landscape that surrounds the village, with its bare fields and isolated clumps of trees, is equally suggestive of a territory that exists outside the usual constraints of time and space.
Avebury is undoubtedly an extraordinary place – a village that not only lies at the heart of a sacred Neolithic landscape but one that uniquely sits within the sweep of a stone circle. Not surprisingly it is a much visited location, especially in the summer months, as visitors that range from newly retired to New Age travellers come to walk the circle of stones and pay tribute to this ancient, stone-bound place. After several visits to the village myself, its megaliths and raised banks, pathways and lanes have become firmly imprinted in my mind. Some places fade quickly but Avebury is somewhere that etches itself on the memory.
Even in prehistoric, monument-rich Wiltshire, Avebury has a particular gravity. It feels as if it is at the centre of things, a focal point for the megalith-strewn landscape that surrounds it. Nearby are other, even older monuments that put the stone circle and avenues of Avebury into context: the destroyed stone and timber circle of The Sanctuary, the chambered West Kennet Long Barrow and, most remarkable of all, the man-made chalk Mount Fuji that is Silbury Hill. These are all connected, by footpaths, tracks and, as many believe, ley lines, although it is the monument of Avebury that gives the impression of lying at the beating heart of it all.
Visiting Avebury is like going to meet an old friend from the past. Last summer, I did just that: arranging to meet a friend whom I had not seen for decades at the village. We sat at a bench in the churchyard of and reminisced about shared memories from forty years ago. Time stretched and compressed obligingly – but perhaps the location helped.
Like Stonehenge, the megaliths of Avebury were likely associated with ritual and social gatherings. They may also have functioned as some sort of solar calendar. But if Avebury is a place of measured time, it is also a place that stands outside time. The past, present and future rest easy here, although in the right light the village with its New Age atmosphere can appear to be perpetually locked in the 1970s – perhaps 1971, the same year that Jarman came here to make his film.
A Journey to Avebury (1971) by Derek Jarman
Also, this excellent fantasy drama TV series for children, broadcast on ITV in 1977, was filmed almost entirely at Avebury. Children of the Stones by Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray
East of Elveden 