About two or three miles from Andover is a village called
Sersden, i. e. Csars dene, perhaps don: C?sar's dene, C?sar's
plains; now Salisbury plaine. (So Salisbury, C?saris Burgus.) But I
have mett with this kind of stones sometimes as far as from Christian
Malford in Wilts to Abington; and on the downes about Royston, &c. as
far as Huntington, are here and there those Sarsden-stones. They peep
above the ground a yard and more high, bigger and lesser. Those that
lie in the weather are so hard that no toole can touch them. They take
a good polish. As for their colour, some are a kind of dirty red,
towards porphyry; some perfect white; some dusky white; some blew,
like deep blew marle; some of a kind of olive greenish colour; but
generally they are whitish. Many of them are mighty great ones, and
particularly those in Overton Wood. Of these kind of stones are framed
the two stupendous antiquities of Aubury and Stone-heng. I have heard
the minister of Aubury say those huge stones may be broken in what
part of them you please without any great trouble. The manner is thus:
they make a fire on that line of the stone where they would have it to
crack; and, after the stone is well heated, draw over a line with cold
water, and immediately give a smart knock with a smyth's sledge, and
it will breake like the collets at the glasse-house. [This system of
destruction is still adopted on the downs in the neighbourhood of
Avebury. Many of the upright stones of the great Celtic Temple in that
parish have been thus destroyed in my time.
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