More information : A stone circle, 137 feet 6 inches (42.0m.) diameter situated on Willings Wall Warren, 500 yards south of Hentor Brook and cut by a reave (Willings Walls Reave SX 56 NE 123) (circle sited at SX 58176517). The circle consists of four groups of stones, described by Breton as being cist-like, but this is not substantiated by their plan. There is no trace of a barrow or of a surrounding trench. (1-3) In the area at which Willings Walls Reave turns through 40 degrees (SX 58186516) there are several upright slabs which may be heavily robbed cists. (4) Situated on a stone free shelf at 330m. OD are the remains of an near circular structure (see plan). It is formed by an earthen bank averaging 3.0m. wide and from 0.1m. to 0.2m. high, with two distinctly straight lengths in the south-west and south east quadrants. The internal diameter north to south is 39.0m. and east to west 41.0m. Part of the eastern quadrant is destroyed or obscured by the Willings Walls reave which has evidently been aligned towards it (SX 56 NE 123). Four groups of stones are set at irregular intervals on the bank and there may at least one other group which was an alignment point for the reave. They are in groups of from three to five, generally from 0.3. to 0.7m. high, with lesser ones which may be trigging stones. They are as in Worth's plan, with a tendency for slabs to be set across the line of the bank. At each group the bank has been obliterated and this seems not an original feature but the result of animals, particularly sheep, using the stones as rubbing posts; the depressions around some stones are now 0.2m. deep. The 4.0m. gap in the bank in the north-west quadrant appears to be a similar depradation. It is most improbable that the stones are the remains of robbed cists (see ground photographs), but the monument as a whole is unique. The interior is flat and featureless and while there could have been stone robbing to supply the reave there is no evidence to sustain this. The reave is 3.5m. wide and from 0.4m. to 0.6m. high, containing the usual mixture of easily gathered small stones with a few larger slabs and blocks. But whereas the area to the west of the reave is relatively stone free there is an abundant supply to the east where the ground slopes upwards. These seem two possible classifications. One, and the least convincing, is that of an enclosure totally stripped of all manageable stone. The second, and more likely, is that it is some form of "ringery" possibly an embanked stone circle with inner and outer facing pairs. (The only other embanked circle, on Ringmoor Down, probably had single close spaced stones SX 56 NE 161). Since it would be reasonable to suppose the stones would be of comparable size, and very few of this nature are in the reave it may be the original disposition was of four to six groups. The anomoly in the north-east, where four flat stones are embedded at intervals, could represent a demolished group. Surveyed at 1:10 000 on MSD and at 1:500. (5)
The remains of a ring cairn lying adjacent to and partly beneath the Willings Walls Reave. The cairn is internally kerbed and survives as a 1 metre wide bank standing up to 0.2 metres high and enclosing a 41 metre diameter internal area. The Willings Walls Reave changes direction as it passes through the cairn and it has been suggested that the reave builders used it as a landmark when laying out their boundary. Scheduled. (6)
Depicetd and described by Robertson. (7)
Depicted by Butler. (8)
Centred SX 58186518. This somewhat enigmatic feature remains as described by Authority 5. Its interpretation as an embanked stone circle appears to be the most fitting. (9) |