What is a stone circle?

What a stone circle is

Historic England's scheduling texts date excavated stone circles to the Late Neolithic and Middle Bronze Age, about 2400 to 1000 BC, while radiocarbon dating places the earliest circles in Britain at about 3200 to 2500 BC. In England most surviving examples are in the uplands of the west and north, including Bodmin Moor, Dartmoor, the Peak District and Cumbria, a pattern that may reflect where circles have survived rather than where they were built. Aubrey Burl counted about 1,300 stone circles in Britain and Ireland. Some circles stand inside henges, some are set within a bank, and many lie close to barrows, cairns and stone rows.

How stone circles look on LiDAR

Most standing stones are too small for a bare-earth terrain model to show, and the filtering that removes vegetation and buildings often removes upright stones as well, so a stone circle may not appear on the model at all. What does show is any associated earthwork, such as an encircling bank, the level platform the circle stands on, and nearby barrows and cairns. A local relief model is the best view for these low features, while a first-return surface model or aerial photographs are better for the stones themselves.

See LiDAR visualisations explained for what each method shows.

What can look like one

Ring cairns, kerb cairns and the stone footings of round houses (hut circles) are often mistaken for stone circles. Natural boulders and later stock enclosures can also form rough rings of stones.

Protection

Historic England regards surviving stone circles as worthy of protection, and many are scheduled monuments protected in England by the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 and in Wales by the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023.

Examples on the LiDAR

Where they are

Counties with the most stone circles that have a page here.

More examples