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Belstone, Devon
Grid ref: SX 6205 9044 Find this on the Map Reference Finder
The Metheral Stone Circle is on Taw Marsh, below Metheral Hill and close to the village of Belstone (SX 6205 9044). Alan Endacott found it while doing fieldwork for his PhD at the University of Exeter, and it was announced in November 2024. Volunteers helped with an excavation in September and October 2024.
About 20 stones survive. Most have fallen or are half buried, and a similar number are reported to lie under the ground on the east side. The circle is an oval of roughly 40 by 33 metres with a flattened south side, a small central cairn, and an external bank found in the dig. Most of the stones are natural boulders rather than shaped pillars.
The coverage calls it late Neolithic, about 5,000 years old, which would make it roughly the age of Stonehenge. No radiocarbon date has been reported, so what that age rests on is not clear. Funding came from the Duchy of Cornwall, the Dartmoor Society, the Dartmoor Preservation Association and a crowdfunder. Nothing found says whether it has been scheduled.
Endacott sees Metheral as the northern end of a "sacred arc" of eight stone circles across about five miles, which also takes in Sittaford Tor stone circle and the nearby Irishman's Wall Circle. It is his own theory, and it is not credited to anyone earlier. Reports disagree on how far away the second circle is: Newsweek says 0.6 miles, others about a mile.
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