A. D. PASSMORE AND THE STONE CIRCLES OF NORTH WILTSHIRE 207 
the cromlechs at Carnac in Brittany were.'* 
Despite this modern concentration in 
north Wiltshire concentric circles were uncommon 
in Britain and Ireland, only about thirty previously 
being known, widely spread from Cnoc Fillibhir on 
Lewis in the Outer Hebrides down to the outer 
sarsen ring and inner bluestone circle at 
Stonehenge five hundred miles to the south. There 
are two distinct regions, a concentration around the 
coasts of the Irish Sea and a scatter in Wessex. 
Around the North Channel the ovals are 
unimpressive, their outer ring enclosing a much 
smaller containing a central cairn, a feature which 
may reveal their sepulchral nature. The Wessex 
concentrics are different. Their paired rings are 
closely-set and arguably they were open-air 
facsimiles of a roofed, wooden prototype. In such an 
interpretation the concentrics represented the outer 
wall-posts and inner uprights of a covered building 
that had been a place of assembly or maybe a 
mortuary house as the Sanctuary may have been." 
That Passmore was able to claim several 
concentrics in northern Wiltshire is helpful but not 
perplexing. They were part of an established 
tradition. So was his long double line at Coate 
Reservoir. Such avenues in Wessex have been 
known for centuries: at Stonehenge; at Stanton 
Drew in Somerset; at Avebury and the Sanctuary. 
Probably added to an existing ring they are 
comfortably explained as processional approaches 
to the circle. 
To the contrary, in Wiltshire single lines were 
almost unknown. Because John Aubrey’s 
Monumenta Britannica remained unpublished until 
1980 there was no early record of such solitary rows. 
Yet in south-west England they were abundant, 
some in Cornwall and on Exmoor, plentiful on 
Dartmoor, non-existent in Wessex.!° 
According to Passmore they did _ exist, 
sometimes leading in the direction of another ring: 
at Day House Farm NE ‘from the circle there is a 
stone... and at 65 ft. there is another and a like 
distance more...; at Day House Farm SW, ‘a line of 
three stones...’; at Fir Clump, ‘to the west was a 
single line of stones’; at Hodson, ‘ 4 distinct lines of 
~ stones’; and at Swindon Old Church ‘several more 
stones extending in all about 2 a mile’. There was 
another at Broome as John Aubrey wrote. ‘In the 
ground below (the Longstone’ are many thus 
00000000000000 in a right line’.!” 
Such a sudden emergence of single lines makes 
it possible that these were the result of influences, 
even immigrations, from the south-west perhaps 
quite late in the history of stone circles, rows of 
standing stones added to existing rings just as 
avenues had been. There is possible confirmation 
in the misinterpreted setting at Langdean Bottom 
three miles south of Avebury. It is a confusion of 
sarsen. 
Passmore described it: ‘An unrecorded stone 
circle’ and ‘a curious collection of stones quite 
unlike anything in the county... an irregular north 
and south line of stones, the first three of which [to 
the north] are upright and in their original 
position’. ‘A short distance east of this line stands a 
stone circle’ with two big stones forming an 
entrance slightly north of west. The ring ‘stands on 
slightly raised ground’.!® 
Despite his interpretation of the site as a stone 
circle there has been a conflict of opinions 
including the negative one that Langdean, like 
Coate and others, was unrewarding to visit because 
‘few traces of these remain’. Happily, those 
‘remains’ do survive. Other suggestions were more 
positive but contradictory. Langdean was either a 
stone circle or a round barrow or a dwelling. 
Nikolaus Pevsner, uninhibited by any 
understanding of prehistory, wrote of. ‘a small 
circle of undressed sarsen 33 ft (10m) in diameter’. 
To Stuart Piggott the site ‘appears to be the 
retaining sarsen kerb of a round barrow 30 ft. 
across’. Terence Meaden thought that the stones 
might be ‘a foundation ring for supporting the floor 
of a hut’. Neil Mortimer who re-examined the area 
inclined to the view that Langdean Bottom might 
be an unusual type of stone circle. 
The conclusions were inconclusive. The 
surveyors of the National Monuments Record 
shrugged. To them the site ‘hardly conforms to a 
prehistoric hut or a stone circle, but proof one way 
or another is unfortunately lacking’.”” 
They were over-pessimistic and seemingly did 
not consider that a nearby feature provided a 
possible solution to the mystery. Pevsner 
mentioned it: ‘E of the circle is a short avenue of 
standing stones’. So did that doyen of fieldwork 
studies, Leslie Grinsell. Very close to the ‘stone 
circle’ he recorded ‘2 parallel rows of upright 
sarsens 10-13 yds. apart (9-12m) and 45 yds. long 
(41m), running roughly W-E., with indications of 
about 3 transverse rows’. Of the ‘stone circle’ he 
thought that ‘the valley situation perhaps favours 
the view that it might be a circular house site’.” 
It supports the idea of Langdean Bottom as a 
form of Dartmoor hut-circle because the suggestion 
is strengthened by its adjacent double row so 
