Aubrey visited Stanton Drew in the summer of 1664, but was unable to reach the stones because the field was full of ripening corn. He recorded that many of the stones had been removed and smashed during the previous few years by farmers covetous of extra land.
Leslie Grinsell suggests this explains ‘the remarkable circumstance’ of the lack of barrows in the area: that there may have been some but were ploughed out.
(in Grinsell’s ‘Archaeology of Wessex’)