A. D. PASSMORE AND THE STONE CIRCLES OF NORTH WILTSHIRE 203 
was married from Day House Farm before which 
the circle stands. 
Passmore was unaware that Jefferies had 
already described the circle in one of a series of 
articles for the Wiltshire Herald in 1867-8. Jefferies 
wrote: 
The road from Coate makes a wide semi-circle 
round to Chisledon. Day-house Lane cuts off the 
angle, and was formerly much used, until the road 
was widened and macadamised. There may be seen 
on the left side of Day-house Lane, exactly opposite 
the entrance to a pen on Day-house Farm, five 
Sarsden stones, much sunk in the ground, but 
forming a semi-circle of which the lane is the base- 
line or tangent. There was a sixth upon the edge of 
the lane, but it was blown up and removed, in order 
to make the road more serviceable, a few years ago. 
Whether this was or was not one of those circles 
known as Druidical, cannot now be determined, but 
it wears that appearance. It would seem that the 
modern lane had cut right through the circle, 
destroying all vestige of one half of it. In the next 
field, known as the Plain, lies, near the footpath 
across the fields to Chisledon, another Sarsden of 
enormous size, with two smaller satellites of the 
same stone close by. If the semi-circle just spoken of 
was a work of the Druids, or of the description 
known as Druidical, which some think a very 
different thing, it may be just possible that these 
detached stones in the Plain had some connection 
with it’.’ 
In the Notebook he continued his account. 
[p.15] In conclusion (repeated on page 13) I wish to 
express my best thanks to Mr. Handy [the] upon 
whose farm the stones are and for the kind manner 
in which he gave me permission to go over his land 
and do what excavation I thought necessary. If any 
one who reads may have any doubt of the accuracy 
of the above statements [I] and think I may have 
drawn from my [p.16] Imagination I shall be 
pleased to take them over the ground and convince 
them of the truth of what I have said. 
Near this circle on the bank of the Reservoir I 
have picked up flint implements of a shape very 
_ often found in the Swiss lacustine dwellings there 
[are also] nearly 2 ft (60cm) under surface [unseen] 
among fossils which would assign them to a very 
early palaeolithic age and also other implements of 
a later period near the same spot. 
[p.17b] The 2 stones behind the shed [Coate] 
have evidently been moved to their present position 
[level with the shed wali lately] when the shed was 
built and this shed being exactly between the two 
circles I think that they are the remains of an 
avenue between (pages 18, 19, blank) 
{p.22] Near this circle I found a piece of red 
pottery of very rude make [being] , the clay mixed 
with small flints and I [should] is [put it] early 
British. I have also found implements near here one 
being [the same] of a type very often found in the 
Swiss Lakes. 
The word Coate is a Celtic Word derived from 
[the] a form of old Welsh coed, wood, or the Cornish 
‘Coit’. 
October Ist A. Passmore 
The line of stones leading from the Coate circle if 
continued would lead to water this is the case at 
Avebury in the Beckhampton which I firmly 
believe in. At Stanton Drew two of the circles have 
short avenues which go from them towards the 
river which flows close by. At Mount Murray in the 
I. of Man there is a small circle [which] with a small 
[p.33] curved avenue. (There is no stone circle at 
Mount Murray. The site at SC 325 766 3.5 miles 
west of Douglas is the Glendarragh ‘circle’ at 
Braaid, Kirk Marown, a mixture of a round ‘Celtic’ 
house and, just to the north, the ‘avenue’, the 
remains of a Norse ‘boat-shaped house of about 
1000 AD’. A.B.) 
Mr. A. L. Lewis in reading a paper before the 
Anthropological Institute says that all [sto] nearly 
all stone circles have a reference to the NE either a 
hill top, [or] a large outlying stone or another 
circle.'” Out of 21 circles visited by him he says 18 
had a special reference to the N.E. the next most 
distinguished marker is the S. E. [nine cases] the 
circle at Coate [Coate at Co] adds another as it has a 
circle at the S. E. 
In a Saxon Charter the ten stones are mentioned 
as a boundary of the parish of Chiseldon. (page 34 
blank). 
[p.35] In the N. W. sky of the evening there are 
the following stars which by a singular coincidence 
are nearly in the same positions as the stones at 
Coate [plan] and to the S. E. of these there are three 
more which are exactly like the 3 stones in the [scn] 
circle at Coate the only difference being that [the 
apex of] star number | is the wrong side of the other 
two. 
Passmore, Notebook 2, [p.30]. July 29, 1895. 
The dry weather [of] in June of this year scorched 
up the grass in several places around the stone circle 
at Coate leaving brown patches thinking that stones 
might be underneath I examined the ground with a 
bar and was rewarded by finding 5 new stones 
