Stanton Drew stone circles

The stone circles at Stanton Drew are outside the village of Stanton Drew, in the Chew Valley, north of the Mendip Hills, approximately 12.9 kilometers south of Bristol in Somerset, England.

Description

• The largest stone circle is the " Great Circle ". With 113 m diameter, it is (after Avebury ), the second largest stone circle in England. He probably consisted of 30 stones, 27 of which have survived. He was surrounded by a trench backfilled today a Henges of about 135 m in diameter and seven meters wide. A 40 m wide access was on the northeast side. It has been demonstrated no surrounding wall.

A stone pathway leads to the north-east of the Great Circle, towards the River Chew and a second reached him from the Northeast District.

• The northeast circle 30 m in diameter and was likely composed of ten or more stones, eight of which have been preserved.
• The Southwest District has 43 m diameter and 12 obtained stones.

Area

The menhir " Hautville 's Quoit " is located in the north side of the river. A large stone near the Hautville Quoit Farm, lying at least since the mid 17th century, but originally an upright position was described by W. Stukeley in 1723 as a 13-meter Menhir. He is now about half as long, because pieces of the stone have occasionally been canceled for mending the roads. W. Stukeley also reports on the presence of another stone.

Further west in the garden of the " Druid 's Arms Public House " is a Cove of two standing stones with a stone lying in between. The rocks are mineralogically different from those of the nearby stone circles. You have heights of 4.4 m, 3.1 m and 1.4 m.

Geophysical survey

The geophysical surveys in 1997 showed the surrounding moat and nine concentric rings post 23-94 m in diameter in the large stone circle. More than 400 pits of one meter width and 2.5 m spacing were in the rings.

The geophysical work changed the traditional view of Stanton Drew as a surface monument, and the Great Circle in its entirety is now considered one of the greatest Final Neolithic monuments. Analogous to the Timber Circles of Woodhenge, Durrington Walls and The Sanctuary is assumed that the pits either interconnected or ( more likely ) contained by a lintel freestanding post. The post-holes in the nine concentric rings had up to one meter in diameter.

Nearby is a small ring has been identified from eight stones and four pits in the middle. Another ring of 43 m in diameter consisting of 12 stones stood in the southwest. A magnetometer survey of the standing stones in the garden of the Druid 's Arms Public House that these stones were almost 1000 years before the stone circles, which are dated to 2800 BC, was erected in 2009. The conclusion was that they probably belong to the portal or to the facade of a megalithic outgoing.