Non-existant stone circle | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Pete G Feb 27, 2004 13:50:07

Last night I was talking to a tractor driver in the pub and he told me that he had made a discovery I would be interested in.
Over the last 2 days he has been deep ploughing a field near Avebury that hasn't been ploughed for years. He was told that if he come across any sarsen stones to phone the farm and they would get a JCB to drag the stones out of the filed.
Over the two days he found around 60 stones between 4 and 6 ft long arranged in a circle.
SO. This morning I went to the site to take a look and found a ring of holes where the stones once were.
I went back to the farm and asked the farmer if he knew of any monuments in the field and he told me that many years ago there was a pond in the middle of the field and all the stones they found when ploughing were placed around it. During the drought of 1977 the pond dried up and he filled it in.
Ah well....
PeteG

VenerableBottyBurp Feb 27, 2004 17:53:44

Replying to Pete G

Where was this Pete ?

VBB

BlueGloves Feb 28, 2004 08:56:05

Replying to Pete G

If you go back, check over the stones for cupmarks and stuff - there might be something, but the stones will be horribly marked from being tractored about.

If the farm workers are communicative maybe you could ask them whether there's been a crop circle nearby within the last five years or so. It'd be a way of getting aerial imagery.

The dry summer was 1976 - I remember it because of a daughter - and the pond, I assume, would have been a dewpond ? It sounds like your watertable is falling. Just postholes in a pattern is strong enough to give the county archaeologist a call.