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Is it or is'nt it? but one thing is interesting in this new items is that Mr.Daw wants to have a Stone Circle Museum - not quite sure how that would work....
"A QUALIFIED surveyor claims a picturesque village on the Essex/Suffolk border might boast the only proper stone circle outside the west of England... continues...
This pretty flint-built church with dark clapboard tower and pointy red clay-tiled roof hides a secret. Where have all these idley strewn about megaliths come from? I counted two at the entrance of the path, one in the church and seven lying about amongst the gravestones. There may be more, lurking just under the surface of the turf. I did a reccie to make sure there weren't others, naturally occurring on the edges of the field next to the church, but they were so different to be inexplicable. Undoubtedly, this was an ancient site, though precisely what it is impossible to say. The lie of the land seemed right, and I was reminded of the Churchill village stones which I had seen only the week before. In response to ocifant's musings on whether or not the indentations on the stones are cup-marks or weathering, I would join the weathering school-of thought, but I have no real experience on which to base this hunch. I'd need to know more about geology to tell.
This is weird. A church, with a whole bunch of sarsens around it.
The two stones in front of the church are not in their original positions, according to a helpful local lady, who also pointed out the sarsen poking inside the SW wall of the church, under the rear pew. Reports of the number of stones varies. I thought I counted as many as 13 stones or remnants, but figures of 9,10 or 11 are more usually reported.
Was this originally a circle? It’s difficult to determine that from what I saw. Most of the stones are on the Southern edges of the churchyard rather than spread around. R*man fragments of a hypocaust were found in an adjoining field, and a kiln site lies nearby, so the area has been in use since the Iron Age, if not earlier.
I'm no expert on cup marks, but several of the stones had round indentations in them. Could this be weathering? Another had a triangular 'groove' cut into it, which intrigued me - see photos for details of these.
This post appears as part of the weblog entry Essex Fringes