Stanton Drew

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Template:Infobox England place with map UA

Stanton Drew (Template:Gbmapping) is a small village within the Chew Valley in North Somerset, England, situated in the Mendip Hills eight miles south of Bristol. The village is famous for its prehistoric monuments.

1 The Village
2 The monuments
3 References
4 External links
- 4.1 Photographs

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The Village

The village of Stanton Drew has a population of approximately 500. It includes a primary school, pub (the Druids Arms), Church and village hall.

The church is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin, which has been a place of Christian worship for at least eight hundred years. In the north aisle is the Norman bowl of the font and further east the small turret steps behind a glass door that in earlier times led up into a rood loft. Although parts date from the 13th. and 14th. centuries the interior, as it is seen today, shows the work that was carried out in the mid 19th. century.

At the northern entrance to the village before the bridge over the River Chew is a white thatched, fifteenth centruy house which became a toll house in the eighteenth centry when turnpikes were in use. Template:Ref

The Rectory Farmhouse is a Grade II* listed building (IoE Number: 32997) dating from the 15th Century.

The Court in Bromley Road dates from 1753 and is a Grade II* listed Building (IoE Number 32992)

Image:Somerset sd stone circle 06.jpg

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The monuments

The most famous feature is the Great Circle, a henge monument consisting most visibly of the second largest stone circle in Britain (after Avebury). The stone circle is 113m in diameter and probably consisted of 30 stones, of which 27 survive today. It was recorded by both John Aubrey and William Stukeley although only recently has its true nature been indicated.

Geophysical work by English Heritage in 1997 revealed a surrounding ditch and nine concentric rings of postholes within the stone circle. More than 400 pits, 1m across and at 2.5m intervals, stood in rings at the site. The ditch is 135m in diameter and about 7m wide. A 40m wide entrance was visible on the north east side. No surrounding bank has been identified although the site awaits excavation.

The geophysical work transformed the traditional view of Stanton Drew as being a surface monument and the Great Circle is now seen as being one of the largest and most impressive Neolithic monuments to have been built. Analogous with the circles of postholes at sites at Woodhenge, Durrington Walls and The Sanctuary, it is thought that the pits would have held posts which would have either been freestanding or lintelled as they could not have supported a roof at that size.

Nearby and to the north east is a smaller ring of 8 stones in the centre of which the geophysical work identified four further pits. A third ring of 12 stones, measuring 43m wide, stands to the south west. Further to the west is a cove of two standing stones with a recumbent slab between them, which can be found in the garden of the Druid's Arms public house. An avenue extends to the north east of the Great Circle towards the River Chew and a second avenue meets it from the north eastern stone circle. A (now recumbent) standing stone called Hautville's Quoit lies across the river to the north on an alignment with the centres of the Great Circle and the southern circle. Current theories suggest the site was dedicated to funerary ritual.

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