page_title: Hodson Stone Circle
section_title: Antiquarian investigation
hierarchical_section_title: Hodson Stone Circle / Antiquarian investigation
caption_attribution_description: English: Stone circle, Day House Lane, Swindon Five stones make up this ancient site and all are visible in this image.
context_page_description: Hodson Stone Circle was a stone circle in the village of Hodson in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although some archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.
  The circle was discovered and recorded by the antiquarian A. D. Passmore in the 1890s. He briefly mentioned it in an article published in The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine while detailing it in greater depth in his unpublished notebooks. He recorded the circle as consisting of eight stones at that time, with a possible avenue or stone row emerging from it and facing in the direction of the circle at Coate. Later archaeologists have noted that some of the sarsens used as building material in Hodson were once part of the circle.
context_section_description: In an 1894 article published in The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, the antiquarian A. D. Passmore related that he was aware of "a number of sarsens" which he thought might have been part of a stone circle. He noted that from these, a line of stones appeared to emerge and head in the direction of Coate. Passmore also produced two notebooks during that decade in which he wrote down observations deriving from his archaeological fieldwork in the region. Here he recorded more about the circle. He observed that a road cut through the circle and several barns encroached on it, meaning that it was "very difficult to find". The contents of Passmore's notebooks and their references to the Fir Clump Stone Circle were not published until 2004, after they had been purchased by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society.
  In his notebook, Passmore noted that he could find eight stones as part of the circle. He also discovered three stones inside the circle, suggesting that these may have been part of an inner circle—in which case the Hodson Stone Circle would have consisted of two concentric rings, akin to the Day House Lane Stone Circle. Alternatively, he suggested that the stones inside the circle may simply have been dumped there by farmers wanting them out of the way.
  Here, he also suggested that the circle was about 250 feet (76m) in diameter, and was thus of a similar size to the Day House Lane Stone Circle. He identified "4 distinct lines of stone" emerging from the circle, suggesting that if this line continued all the way to Coate then it may have attached to the row of stones he also thought emerged from the Day House Lane ring.
  In their 2017 book on prehistoric Wiltshire, the archaeologists David Field and David McOmish noted that a stone circle was "thought to have been present" in Hodson, and that any stones once part of it might now be found as some of the sarsens lying loose around the village or incorporated into the fabric of various buildings.
caption: The remains of the Day House Lane Stone Circle, which Passmore suggested might have connected to the Hodson Stone Circle with a stone avenue
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