Stone and Earth Circles in Dorset

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to publish for the first time a complete set of plans and descriptions of the Dorset stone circles, and of certain allied monuments in which timber uprights may have played a part but whose visible remains today consist only of encircling banks and ditches. The existence of most of the sites described has been recorded, with full references, in the Ordnance Survey’sMap of Neolithic Wessex, but we have been able to add several new circles to those listed there. The field-work was undertaken and the surveys made in 1936 and 1937, while in certain instances use has been made of air-photographs to which Mr O. G. S. Crawford has drawn our attention.