The Enigma Of Arrival - pg. 50

The historical feeling that had caused the sign to be put up had also brought about the restoration of the chapels and abbeys of Amesbury, as well as of the church that lay across the lawn from my own cottage: history, like religion, or like an extension of religion, as an idea of one's own redemption and glory.

Yet there was an uncelebrated darkness before the foundation of that town of Amesbury in 979 A.D., as recorded by the sign. More than five hundred years before that, the Roman army had left Britain. And Stonehenge had been built and had fallen into ruin, and the vast burial ground had lost its sanctity, long before the Romans had come. So that history here, where there were so many ruins and restorations, seemed to be plateaux of light, with intervening troughs or disappearances into darkness.