Traces of Ancient Village Found Near Stonehenge

Stonehenge I've always been fascinated by Stonehenge, and other ancient sites for observance of the seasons. It's struck me as amazing that our so-distant ancestors could have calculated solar and lunar events with such precision - truly a remarkable feat. But this little article has set alarm bells ringing in my head, because on doing a bit of background research I happened across some information that's set my brain a burnin'...

Part of what drew me to heathenry was it's veneration (for want of a better term) of the ancestors, and it's recognition of the simple fact that we are ancestors to future generations. I've dabbled in genealogy, but have never made it back too far on the Haxton side of the fence. I know that all my great grandparents on that side were Lowland Scots, and born in Scotland, and that Haxton's are a sept (tribe) of Clan Keith. But there are other Haxton's about, and the name itself is certainly not Gaelic - it's Anglo-Saxon or Norse, derived from "Hafstan" (Half-stone) or "Hakon".

And so it wasn't that much of a surprise when I discovered two Domesday Book manors named Haxton and Haxton Down, in Devonshire, paying rent (at the time of the books compilation, around 1076) to the Bishop of Exeter. In fact, there's a bit of an agri-tourist business there, Haxton Down Farm, which sounds like my kind of place!

So imagine my surprise when, while seeking the exact location of this Neolithic village, I happened across another Haxton and Haxton Down pairing, this one now incorporated into Fittleton in Wiltshire:

Haxton is not recorded before the twelfth century, but also commemorates a person, Hacun, whose ‘stone’, rather than farm (tun), provides the second element of the name. For most of its history Haxton appears to have been more populous and wealthy than Fittleton; the 1332 tax list, for instance, enters a total for Haxton more than four times that for Fittleton. As late as 1817 the first Ordnance Survey map omits the name Fittleton altogether, and describes the whole settlement as Haxton. The parish church, however, lay just on the Fittleton side of the tithing boundary, and its name has prevailed for the civil parish too. Haxton in the middle ages had its own free chapel, with an endowment of land to support a chaplain. A Victorian tradition which located it in the Berry, the field south of the parish church, was probably mistaken. In 1718 the site was said then to be an orchard, and its glebe lay in the Berry. Most orchards in Haxton, according to the tithe map, lay along Lower Street or close to the Green.

I initially thought this was the same pair that I'd discovered in the Domeday Book, but not so: here's a Google map between the two, a distance of about 120 miles.

You see, Haxton and Haxton Down in Wiltshire are about 7 miles from Stonehenge.

Note well that every etymology of my name has to do with "stone", re-read the headline that the Times gave this article and then cue the music from "The Twilight Zone" ....

The 4,600-year-old ruins appear to form the largest Neolithic village ever found in Britain, archaeologists said today.

(link) [New York Times]

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