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Mayne Stone Circle

Stone Circle

Miscellaneous

This sounds very peculiar - in fact it gets a bit surreal:
More than a century and a-half ago, there was another circle of stones about two miles north west of Pokeswell, at Little Mayne, but it is now in complete ruin, the stones having been again broken and displaced of late years. According to an account in Roger Gale's MSS., the stones of this circle were first disarranged about 1710. Hutchins quotes him thus:

About a mile south-east of Dorchester at Priors Maen, was a circle of stones lately broke to pieces by the owner of the ground called Talbot. The stones were very large and rude. I saw the remains of one that had been hollowed through the middle: the tube was about eighteen inches diameter, and had been about six feet deep, as I was told by Mr. Conyers Place who saw it entire. Before it stood, as he assured me, two small images about three feet high, resembling children in swaddling clothes, and of rude work. There were two avenues pitched of stones leading to it, one fromt he south, the other from the east, as I could perceive from their remains, like those at Abury.
He then goes on to explain why there is sufficient evidence that the [non existent] Priors Maen is actually Little Mayne, as the name of the landlord matches up.

From E Dunkin's 'Some Account of the Megalithic Remains in South Dorset' in 'Reliquary', January 1871.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
26th May 2009ce
Edited 26th May 2009ce

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