Observant visitors to the Avebury monument may have been surprised to see a new stone appearing in the circles .

It was part of a school project run by Overton archaeologist Gill Swanton.

Archaeologists have been taking part in the project called Avenue To Learning with young people using the landscape of the Avebury World Heritage Site.

Members of the Avebury Archaeological and Historical Research Group have been working with groups of Key Stage 2 children (Years 5 and 6) using the Avebury stone circles to bring together their curriculum subjects including geography, maths, ICT, science and history.

Mrs Swanton said the idea of the project was to show children that history did not start with the Romans, Anglo Saxons and Vikings, as history books sometimes depict, but much earlier with the people who built the great monuments like Avebury, Silbury Hill and Stonehenge more than 4,000 years ago.

Under Mrs Swanton’s guidance children from St Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Swindon built an exact replica of one of the buried stones in the Kennett Avenue and used their paper-covered chicken wire “stone” to fill in one of the gaps in the avenue – but just for one day.

Mrs Swanton said: “We were able to tell the children the shape and size of the stone which we have been able to discover by using ground-penetrating radar.

“The children then had great fun making a full- sized model of the stone, and we had to use a horsebox to get it from their school to Avebury.

Then they proudly put it on the exact spot of the original.”