The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

Coate Stone Circle

Stone Circle

Miscellaneous

The following extract comes from Aubrey Burl's Prehistoric Avebury (1979). Yale University Press, New Haven. p 237. [My comments in parentheses].

Much farther away, nine miles to the north of Avebury are the fallen pillars of the Coate Circle, prostrate and three-quarters covered in turf but when A.D. Passmore probed the ground [research published in 1894] he found several were up to three metres long. Like Langdean [also known as Little Avebury] there was the suggestion of an avenue leading to the ring from the north [the course of the existing DayHouse Lane, past the Richard Jefferies Museum back towards Swindon]. It has been thought that Richard Jefferies first recognised the remains of this ring and, undoubtedly, he had an affinity with the people who had moulded the ancient landscape before him. [...]

In the case of Coate, however it was John Aubrey, two hundred years before Jefferies who wrote that "at Broome near Swindon in Wiltshire", hardly a mile from Coate, "in the middle of a pasture ground called Long-stone is a great Stone ten foot high (or better) standing upright", the ruin of a circle with a row of stones " in a right line" leading to it.
RedBrickDream Posted by RedBrickDream
4th January 2003ce
Edited 4th January 2003ce

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