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Wayland’s Smithy

Wayland’s Smithy is about a mile’s walk along the Ridgeway from the Uffington White Horse and free to enter.

This Neolithic long barrow and chamber tomb site was built around 3700 BC, at Ashbury – which had been associated with a Germanic smith-god called Wayland since Saxon times.  According to legend, a traveller whose horse has lost a shoe can leave it with a silver coin at the smithy and return the next day to find it re-shod.

Human remains found on the site indicate that 14 people were interred in an earlier burial structure between 3590 and 3550 BC. Between 3460 and 3400 BC a second far larger barrow was constructed on top. It is the atmospheric ruins of this that can be explored by visitors to the site today.