Message #123363

[Ericka Bowman]

The axis passes very nearly centrally through an ... columniation (so to call it) between two uprights ... the external circle and between the uprights of the northernmost? trilithon as it originally stood. Of this ... on the southernmost upright with the lintel ... fell in 1620, but the companion survived as the

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leaning stone which formed a conspicuous and picturesque object for many years, but happily now restored to its original more dignified and safer condition of verticality. The inclination of this stone, however, took place in the direction of the axis of the avenue, and as the distance between it and its original companion is known both by the analogy of the two perfect trilithons and by the measure of the mortice holes on the lintel they formerly supported, we obtain by bisection the distance, 11 inches, from its edge, of a point in the continuation of the central axis of the avenue and temple.

The banks which form the avenue have suffered much degradation. It appears from Sir Richard Colt Hoare's account that at the beginning of the last century they were distinguishable for a much greater distance than at present, but they are still discernible, especially on the northern side, for more than 1300 feet from the centre of the temple, and particularly the line of the bottom of the ditch from which the earth was taken to form the bank, and which runs parallel to it.



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