Nine Stones

The Nine Stones is a small stone circle standing near the village of Winterbourne Abbas in Dorset. It sits at the bottom of a narrow valley, enclosed by trees on three sides and bordered by the A35 road on the north. The circle measures about nine metres by eight metres across and contains nine sarsen stones, two of which are much larger than the others. These two tall stones face two very short ones, creating an uneven but deliberate arrangement. Two of the stones have been partly engulfed by the roots of a nearby beech tree. Archaeologists believe the circle was built during the Bronze Age, between three thousand three hundred and nine hundred BCE. It belongs to a wider tradition of stone circles spread across Britain, Ireland and Brittany. Local antiquarians like John Aubrey and William Stukeley took an interest in the site in the eighteenth century. Folklore links the circle to the Devil and to children turned to stone, while modern Druids still use it for ceremonies. The stones weigh up to seven tonnes each and would have required many people to move and raise them. Visitors reach the circle along a narrow lane beside the A35. Iron railings surround the stones, keeping the site protected. The two tallest megaliths stand on the northwestern edge, one pointed and over two metres high, the other broad and square. The remaining stones are much smaller, none reaching a metre in height. The setting is quiet, shaded by trees and overlooked by the busy road nearby. From the circle, the land rises gently on all sides, giving a sense of enclosure within the valley bottom.