Nine Stones

Nine Stones

Stone Circle
Dorset

It is a little, elliptical stone circle 9.1 x 7.9m (30 x 26ft) wide situated beside the main road (A35) within a railed enclosure and shaded by trees. There is a resemblance to Kingston Russel, a slightly larger stone circle two and a half miles south-west, for both sites were once graded to the north. The Nine Stones, in fact, contain two conspicuously taller stones, 1.2m (3.9ft) and 2.1m (6.8ft) high, on either side of a low block at true North. As one is a thin pillar and the other a broad, almost square slab, they could possibly be sexual symbols. Opposite to them are the lowest stones of the complex.
The biggest stone, eight tons in weight, needed many people to move and erect it, but the ring itself could accommodate only a few. The site might more suitably be seen as a focal point for one or two participants, the remainder of the small community outside watching ceremonies that here, unlike in the North of Britain, contained no cremation deposits. This stone circle, like many of the scattered Dorset ovals, is probably of the Bronze Age.