The ground plan of the Prehistoric Close at Stanton Drew, six miles south of Bristol.

Alignment A, the most interesting alignment, runs from southwest to northeast at an angle of about 53 degrees clockwise from north, closely matching the acute angle of a carpenter's triangle.

The thing about this angle is its proximity to the summer and winter solstices. This alignment follows a gentle rise after crossing the river, allowing Neolithic people to climb to a point from which they could look back and bring the winter solstice sunset into accurate alignment with the cove. But that is not all they did.

These early astrogeometers understood only too well the effect of altitude on the solstice and lunar standstills.

They found that when they climbed to just below the village of Belluton, a steep rise gave an altitude so high that the moon had replaced the sun. This gave a solstice at one end of Alignment A and the northernmost rising moon at the other. What better place could there be to manufacture a synthetic sun of timber inside the close? See the landform image later.

The Great Circle comprises circles with diameters of 138 and 133, centred four megalithic yards apart. The blend radius is 119 My. The axis of this egg points precisely south, midway between the two southernmost lunar maxima.

Superb geometry dating back at least 4,500 years!

But it did not start out this way! 

77. Sunrise from the South-southwest Circle on the 19th of June 2016.  

It was on the evening of the 18th of June 2016 that the weather forecast for the following day promised a cloudless sky over the Bristol area, in an otherwise overcast Britain. This clearing presented a photographic opportunity too good to miss. So I packed a lunch, brewed a flask of tea, and with cameras packed away in the car's boot, I set off to spend the night at Stanton Drew.

The village of Stanton Drew has only one public house - the excellent and highly recommended Druid’s Inn. This inn has a spacious car park to one side, from which I planned to conduct operations and where I could get some overnight shuteye. The car park is on two levels, and the upper level leads to a prominence where prehistoric folk chose to build a stone Cove.

The Cove sits on Alignment A, from which Stanton's early inhabitants had a clear view towards what is now Belluton. Another purpose of the Cove is to face south to receive the southernmost rising moon and the star Gamma Crucis, which disappeared below the southern horizon around 4,800 years ago.

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We began by taking a photograph of the summer solstice from the South-southwest Circle, as shown above. The photo proves little, but we were surprised that after taking it, the walk down to the Great Circle gave a second chance to observe the dawn. WOW.

It all has to do with altitude, you see.

This is how a screen could block out the solstice, causing the moon to take the place of the sun every 19 years. It does not matter what it is made of; it could be a brick wall or the side of a mountain. The important point is that it requires the viewer to look over it at about 13 degrees. Under such conditions, or similar ones, the moon takes the place of the sun every 19 years, usually when it is dark and cloudless. This is the very reason Stone Age man built these monuments at Stanton Drew.

The story begins with someone standing where the Cove is now, looking northeast across the River Chew and beyond to a distant peak, and realising they had the ideal conditions for a grand plan.

A 3:4:5 Pythagorean triangle was probably produced alongside the Cove, on the ground where the graveyard now stands, with its hypotenuse marking one end of the 2-kilometre-long Alignment A.

79. 

80.  From sleepy brook to deep ravine.

It's said that the stones of Stanton Drew walk down to the river Chew at night to take a drink. How quaint! So I went to look at this river, and I can say that any stone that went for a drink never came back! With steep slopes on either side, the river resembles a miniature version of America's Grand Canyon.

I estimate this ravine to be about four metres deep and seven metres wide at the top. 

82. I see no alignment suggested by Professor Thom.

 A view from the centre of the Northeastern Circle. 

Alignment A passes through the centre of the Great Circle and ends at the Cove, which lies hidden behind the church. Its centre is conveniently marked by a group of visitors there to pay their respects. This photo shows that the sun is too far south to be aligned on the winter solstice when viewed from the North Circle. This was no problem for the Beaker People, who crossed the River to view the winter solstice from position F. See the Landform image.

Next, we climb to Position J, where we have a high-altitude view to the northeast from below the village of Belluton at Position K. This 13-degree uphill climb at the extremity of Alignment A places the Moon rather than the Sun.

Conclusion? Alignment A has the Sun at one end and the Moon at the other.

83.  A view looking down on Stony Close from the South-southwest Circle. 

Although most of its stones are missing, this picture shows how the Great Circle and its henge looked four thousand five hundred years ago. However, this is not how the Great Circle began. It began as a massive 300-foot-diameter fire that replicated the Sun.

Also visible in this picture is the more complete North Circle, conveniently framed by the causeway through the Great Circle's bank and ditch. John Wood called the North Circle a "Lunar Temple" because he believed a line between it and the South Circle points to the southernmost moonset.

It also pointed to low-traversing stars, such as the slowly disappearing Gamma Crucis of the Southern Cross, which dipped below the southern horizon around 5,000 years ago due to the precession of the Earth's axis. Imagine how the inhabitants of Stanton Drew felt, watching those stars slowly disappear! 

84.  This is what the fire looked like from the South Circle.

85.  A view south from Hautvilles Quoit.  

This alignment from the Quoit -- a solitary standing stone -- passes through the centres of the Great and South circles, keeping watch on the slowly disappearing stars of the Southern Cross. The line is acknowledged to be not quite straight, as you might expect when tracing the position of a star constantly on the move. 

86.   

No doubt encouraged by archaeologists who cast doubt on the Tyning Stones' connection to Stanton Drew's stone circles and Close, despite the stones marking the equinox and the location of a freshwater spring.   

This derogatory attitude no doubt encouraged a farmer to pull them out of the ground and carry them off to build a bridge over the Chew upstream of the Close.   

This photo shows how the Tyning Stones ended up. One has been broken into handy-sized pieces to support the other.

The original position of the Tyning's is still marked on OS maps, which show an alignment with the Equinox when viewed from the centre of the North Circle. This alignment extends for some seven miles, ending at the high plateau on which Bristol Airport is built. 

87. Stanton Drew's Cove. 

Archaeologists believe the Cove may once have been the portal of a long barrow whose mound disappeared long ago. They also say that a long barrow would make the Cove 1,000 years older than the stone circles. I don't believe the Cove was once part of a long barrow, but either way, I would still date it to around 3500 BC.

The side slabs of the Cove are not parallel but splay out towards the south. To determine precisely what the Cove points at, it was necessary to measure the amount of splay and decide, as closely as possible, what each slab aims at.

To this end, a wooden contraption was constructed along the lines of a parallelogram. This device helped to show that the side slabs have a splay of about nine degrees. 

Determining what each slab points at was another problem. As you can see from the above, the view south (or southeast) is often blocked in summer by bushes that spoil it.  

Fortunately, I already have some photos on file, taken in winter.

 88.   And this is the result. Previously thought to face too far south to align with anything important, Stanton's Cove was intended to bring the moon and at least one of the fast-disappearing stars of the Southern Cross together. Most likely date 3,500 BC.