A. D. PASSMORE AND THE STONE CIRCLES OF NORTH WILTSHIRE 199 
ring is probably a little south of the lane around SU 
093 753 with the barrow about a third of a mile 
away in Hoare’s field. 
The second known ring was at Broome, SU 167 
825, 6% miles NW of Winterbourne Bassett. In the 
late 17th century John Aubrey wrote: 
at Brome near Swindon in Wiltshire in the middle of 
a pasture ground called Long-stone is a great stone 10 
foot high (or better) standing upright, which I take to 
be the Remainder of these kind of Temples. In the 
ground below are many thus 00000000000000 in a 
right line. The ground is ye Inheritance of the right 
Honable Lord Seymour. 
Seymour was Aubrey’s friend of long-standing, 
with whom he often stayed at Marlborough. Sixty 
years later Stukeley copied Aubrey’s description 
without acknowledgement. ‘Long Stone, at 
Broome, near Swindon, Wilts, is a great high stone, 
and a little way off many lesser in a line’. At some 
time the sarsen was dragged away but in 1894 
Passmore himself noted that its hole was still 
visible in Longstone Field between Coate Road and 
Broome Lane.° 
The other boulders were destroyed in the mid- 
19th century when the executors of a benefactor’s 
will ‘purchased the remains of the Druidical temple 
at Broome, and after having them broken up they 
were conveyed to Cricklade’ eight miles to the 
north-west ‘and they now formed parts of the roads 
and footways of the town’. 
Nineteenth century indifference to ancient 
relics in the neighbourhood was no different in 
France. An antiquarian there came upon a 
magnificently capstoned portal-dolmen and made 
enthusiastic arrangements for members of his 
Society to inspect it. To his consternation, when 
they arrived, there was nothing to be seen. In 
disbelief he asked the proprietor whether they were 
at the wrong place. ‘Oh, you mean those big stones? 
Oh, when you said there was a large company 
coming, and I thought you would have more room 
to circulate, so I had them broken up and hauled 
away to mend the road.’ Incredible or not the report 
is ‘absolument vraie quoique invraisemblable!’. 
- Courrier de ’Europe, Septembre 27, 1884.° 
And not only in England and France. In 
August, 1987, during intensive fieldwork in south- 
west Ireland, the writer was advised to go the 
attractively-ditched recumbent stone circle of 
Glantane NE near Millstreet. Behind the drab 
house was a green wilderness, garden overgrown, 
long grass, weeds, a shadow of trees green with 
moss: 
Annihilating all that’s made 
To a green thought in a green shade. 
Andrew Marvell, Thoughts in a Garden, stanza 6 
Like that green thought the stone circle had 
also been annihilated, its ditch filled, its pudgy 
recumbent, two tall portals, eight chunky circle- 
stones, a pair of outliers all dragged from the 
ground and carted away to add no more than a 
square metre or two to the cultivated fields.’ The 
fate of Broome was not unique. 
Even today destruction continues, often 
through ignorance, sometimes through necessity, 
occasionally because of deliberate vandalism, and it 
is fortunate that fieldworkers like Arthur Passmore 
recorded monuments that otherwise would have 
vanished leaving no word of their existence. 
He was a man of considerable prejudices, 
finding fools insufferable. The writer owns his copy 
of Alfred Watkins’ Early British Trackways, Moats, 
Camps, and Sites of 1922. Passmore thought little of 
it. On the title-page he pencilled ‘ROT’ and stuck 
in a typed comment, ‘How any man at any time can 
have made such a collection of damned nonsense I 
cannot imagine’. Inside the front cover is a further 
scornful criticism, ‘Useful for illustrations only’ 
Early British 
Trackways, Moats, 
Mounds, Camps, 
and Sites. 
A Lecture given to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, at Hereford, 
September, 1921, by ALFRED WATKINS, Fellow and Progress Medallist 
(for 1910), of the Royal Photographic Soc jety; Past President (1919) 
of the Woolhope Club, With lillustrations by the Author, and much 
added matter. 
have made such a 
I cannot 
dow sng man at anytime 
coilection of 
ipagine - 
demned nonset 
1922: 
Herrrorp: THE WATKINS METER Co. 
Lonpon : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & Co., Lrp 
Fig. 3 Title-page of Passmore’s copy of Alfred Watkins’ Early 
British Trackways... 
