The quoit, which generally means the covering stone of a cromlech—“Hautville’s Quoit,” as it is named on the Ordnance map—looms large in Stanton Drew tradition; it is locally as much respected as the circles themselves. It is pointed to most unmistakably by the fact that a line from it to the S.W. circle passes nearly through the centre of the great circle.

If the observation line, then, meant anything astronomically, it can only have had to do with the rising of a star far to the north, in a position far more northerly than the sun ever reaches.

The “quoit,” lying in an orchard by the roadside, has nothing very impressive about its appearance—a recumbent mass of greyish sandstone; but it seems to be a brick in the Stanton Drew building. By some regarded as a sarsen block from Wiltshire, it is, in Prof. Lloyd Morgan’s opinion, more probably derived from the Old Red Sandstone of Mendip. In any case it is not, geologically speaking, in situ; nor has it reached its present position by natural agency.

With regard to two of the megalithic circles, at first sight the constituent stones seem irregularly dotted about the field; but as we approach them the unevenly spaced stones group themselves.

The material of which the greater number of the rude blocks is composed is peculiar and worthy of careful examination. It is a much altered rock consisting, in most of the stones, of an extremely hard siliceous breccia with angular fragments embedded in a red or deep brown matrix, and with numerous cavities which give it a rough slaggy appearance. Many of these hollows are coated internally with a jasper-like material, the central cavity being lined with gleaming quartz-crystals.

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Fig. 47.—The Circles and Avenues at Stanton Drew. Photograph of 25-inch Ordnance map, shewing approximate azimuths of sight-lines.

The majority of the stones were probably brought from Harptree Ridge on Mendip, distant some six miles. Weathered blocks of Triassic breccia, showing various stages of silicification, there lie on the surface; and there probably lay the weathered monoliths which have been transported to Stanton Drew. It is important to note that they were erected unhewn and untouched by the tool. A few stones are of other material—sandstone, like the “quoit,” or oolite from Dundry.

In the great circle, of the visible stones some retain their erect position, others are recumbent, several are partially covered by accumulation of grass-grown soil. Others are completely buried, their position being revealed in dry seasons by the withering of the grass above them.