1:52pm Monday 14th July 2008
Lord Avebury and Time Team's Phil Harding will be at the Avebury Day fete to help celebrate the launch of the Avebury World Heritage Site Residents' Pack'.
The launch will take place beside the banks of Avebury's 4,500-year-old henge on Saturday 19th July.
The pack is the first of its kind produced specifically for those who live within one of the UK's 27 World Heritage Sites.
The Residents' Pack is the result of two years hard work by a wide range of contributors.
In July 2006 the residents of the World Heritage Site were invited to appear in an aerial photograph standing in Avebury's world famous stone circle.
This photo marked the start of the Residents' Pack project.
The Pack is a limited edition designed to celebrate the unique values that make the World Heritage Site such a special place to live.
It includes a book made up of a collection of pieces by people with unique personal and professional insight into the area, including eminent archaeologists, local residents, farmers and pagans.
The accompanying leaflets provide practical information on the roles of the different organisations that look after the World Heritage Site and how residents can get involved.
The Pack has been sponsored by the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding National Beauty, English Heritage, the National Trust, Kennet District Council, the Henge Shop, the Council of British Archaeologists, the Wiltshire Heritage Museum and The Avebury Society.
1. The launch will take place at 4 pm on Avebury Sportsfield on Saturday, July 19th. After some short speeches by Lord Avebury and Phil Harding residents' will be invited to collect their packs. The Avebury Day fete itself begins at 12.30 pm.
2. Avebury and Stonehenge was inscribed on the World Heritage List for their outstanding prehistoric monuments in 1986. Avebury stone circle is the largest in Europe dating back to around 2,400 BC. The henge consists of a huge bank and ditch 1.3km in circumference. The stone circle is surrounded by outstanding ritual and funerary sites dating from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Other major monuments in the World Heritage Site include Windmill Hill, West Kennet long barrow, the Sanctuary, Silbury Hill, and the West Kennet and Beckhampton Avenues. Avebury and its landscape represent an incomparable testimony to prehistoric times.
3. The Avebury World Heritage Site covers 22.5 square kilometers of chalk downland and mixed arable fields which lie within the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The ownership and management necessary to protect the wealth of archaeological features it contains, is shared between the National Trust, English Heritage, Natural England, farmers, landowners and householders.
For further information contact Sarah Simmonds the World Heritage Site Officer on 01380 734 820 or sarah.simmonds@kennet.gov.uk
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