Easy to visit (although parking is a bit tricky), as it is located directly in the street Zuidlaarderweg just before the roundabout in Annen (if you drive north).
Unfortunately, the grave is only half preserved, there are still two pairs of upright stones with their capstones along with the endstone. Markers show the position of the missing stones.
Hunebed D9 Annen is actually only half a hunebed. Even when first recorded as long ago as the early 1700s, this passage grave had already lost its western half to stone robbers. Only the eastern section consisting of two pairs of sidestones with their capstones remains.
Unusually, this hunebed stands in a built-up area, on Zuidlaarderweg in the northeast of Annen. Bus line 51 from Assen to Groningen passes through Annen and stops just across the road from this hunebed: the name of the bus stop is, helpfully, Hunebed. If you are traveling with this bus, just keep checking the video display until the bus reaches this stop.
The hunebed was excavated in 1952 when over a hundred pieces of pottery dating from the Funnel Beaker Culture of five thousand years ago were unearthed. When this investigation was completed, concrete markers were placed flush with the ground to indicate the positions of the missing stones.
Ooh! In TME, Julian says he couldn't find this one, but we found it with ease. I always smile when I visit monuments in urban settings and this one didn't disappoint. With only two flat capstones balanced on five remaining uprights, it looks very like a mini-allee-couverte or a 'My Little Hunebed'. Nestling between tidy, small 1950s detached houses, and opposite a bus shelter, someone had used the monument as a convenient bike park. It had a plot of land all to itself and looked very comfortable with its current position.
I think Julian calls this one Annen but it is in the village of Noordlo on the main drag north out of the village.