The Stone Circle of Distant Hill

My wife Kathy and I have been celebrating the Winter Solstice at friend’s homes since the early 1970’s. In 1980, we bought 21 acres of rocky New England land in the hills of Walpole, New Hampshire. We spent over ten years building our home, gardens, outbuildings, stonewalls, a pond - all the while hoping to find enough time to build a venue for our own Solstice celebration.

The stones were not perfect - they were a bit shorter than I would have liked, ranging in height from 3 to 5 feet, but they were what I had to work with.

Unsure of how to lay out the stones, I decided to hold off on the building of the circle and did some research. I bought a few books about stone circles to help me with a possible design. One of those books, ‘A Guide To The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany’ by Aubrey Burl, really inspired me. I learned of the hundreds of stone circles in Europe, many using stones the size of the ones I had at my disposal from our property. My stone circle obsession had begun!

The first circle we saw in Ireland was called Drombeg, also known as the ‘Druid’s Altar,’ three miles west of Ross Carbery, County Cork. It is said to be the best known of the Irish recumbent stone circles, and one of the most interesting because it was fully excavated and restored in 1957.

The stones at Drombeg were somewhat larger than the stone I had waiting back in New Hampshire, but not by much. There are 17 standing stones, in a 31 ft (9.5 m) diameter circle, with the tallest being just over 6 ft (2 m) tall. The recumbent altar stone is about 3 ft wide and high (1 m) and 7 ft long (2.1 m).

It is believed that Drombeg circle was aligned with the winter solstice sunset when it was built. The most recent C-14 radiocarbon dating estimated it was erected in 780+/- 80 bc. We saw a few other small circles on our trip, but nothing that I connected with like ‘Druid’s Altar.’ I felt confident that I could build a stone circle with the stones I had collected. I could not wait to get home and get to work.

The first stone to be placed was the ‘sighting ring’ stone. Years earlier, in the early 1990’s, I had unearthed a large stone while tilling our pumpkin patch. It was a beautiful 4-foot tall by 3-foot wide by 8-inch thick stone with a missing corner in a shape of a half circle. At the time, I was not sure what I would use it for, but it was definitely unique and worth keeping.

When deciding on how to align the circle to the setting sun, this stone came to mind immediately. I found a 7-inch diameter metal ring from an old wagon wheel hub, and it fit the rounded corner of the rock perfectly. The plan was to look through the ring and align the top of a distant "outlier" stone to the spot on the horizon where the sun set on the Winter Solstice.

The tallest outlying stone was the second stone to be set, and was also an easy choice. Of all the stones I had, there was one that was taller than the rest. About 7-feet 6-inches long, and somewhat pointed - perfect for an alignment stone. For stability, I set this stone about 18-inches deep, leaving about 6-feet showing. This was the deepest of any of the eventual 19 standing stones. A few stones, wide with flat bottoms, are only 6 inches below grade.

With the alignment stones set, I moved to the main compass point locations - north, south, east and west. Using the tallest remaining stones, I set these four standing stones at the same height above ground, 4-foot 6-inches, varying the depth of the excavated pocket accordingly.

Moving back to installing the remaining standing stones, I set four more stones at the NE, SE, NW and SW compass points. As with the main compass point stones, these were also set at the same height relative to each other - in this case about 42 to 48 inches above ground. Then I finished the circle with eight more slightly smaller stones placed midway between the eight compass point stones already standing. I had one more very pointed 6-ft tall stone that I felt would help make the alignment more precise, so I set that ten feet outside the circle with its point lined up with the outlying stone’s tip when viewed through the ‘sighting ring.’ This made a total of 16 standing stones in the circle, 1 sighting ring stone, 2 outlying alignment stones and 8 sitting stones.