Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury
Avebury's museum of prehistoric finds, named for the marmalade heir who excavated the stone circle and re-erected many of its stones in the 1930s
This small museum holds cases of flint tools, pottery and bone dug from the fields around Avebury, largely by one wealthy digger, Alexander Keiller. Keiller inherited a fortune from his family’s marmalade business in Dundee, then spent years buying up land around Avebury in the 1930s so he could dig there himself. His work re-erected many of the stone circle’s fallen stones and helped establish the layout you can still trace today.
The museum itself is in two parts. The Stables Gallery holds Keiller’s own finds, while the Barn Gallery next door, run by the National Trust, covers the wider Avebury World Heritage Site, from the stone circle to the surrounding landscape. English Heritage holds the guardianship of the site and its collection, but it’s the National Trust that looks after visitors day to day, and there’s an admission charge covering both galleries.
Avebury henge itself is a couple of minutes’ walk, and Silbury Hill, the huge prehistoric mound a little further south, is well within reach on the same visit.
