Norridge Wood, nr. Warminster, Wilts.

Detail: This circle was reported on August 14th and is very close to Cley Hill, a regular site for crop circles over the years. The crop type is a bit of a mystery as it looks like very over-ripe barley, but it is very unusual for this crop to remain unharvested so late into the summer,  it is usually harvested at the end of June.

The circle looks like it may have been there for some time, the crop looks as if it has regrown substantially, if it had been made recently in such a mature crop, the plants would have laid flat and would have been too mature to recover via phototropism – as it has essentially stopped growing and is in the process of drying-out.

This circle measures around 180-200ft in length.

Location: Norridge Wood is right next to the field and lies to the East of Cley Hill – you can see the hill in some of the pictures in the gallery below. Cley Hill is a well known landscape feature that lies to the west of the town of Warminster. A distinctive, soaring chalk hill, once shaped by ancient seas, it is an important site archeologically and biologically. It is the home to an abundance of grasses, wildflowers and insects. Read more here. It also lies close to Cradle Hill, a famous site during the ‘Warminster Mystery’ flap – a series of strange happenings including UFO sightings that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. You can read more about the Warminster happenings here. You can also read Arthur Shuttlewood’s original book on the subject see here for more information.

Flight: We should have photographed two circles on this flight, but unfortunately the first circle we arrived at (at Monarch’s Way), had already been harvested. The farmer had cut right to the ground, so even a good outline of the pattern had not survived the combines blades.

Design & Symbolism: Three circles intersect to create this pattern and there are some interesting geometric components to the way the elements of the design come together. See the geometry gallery below for more information. Three is a number we have seen a few times in the circles of 2018 – notably at Keysley Down, Coneybury Henge, Winterbourne Bassett and Mixon, nr Etchilhampton. You can read more about the qualities of the number three using the links above.

Visiting the Circles? If you are thinking of visiting any crop circles this summer, please read our Visiting the Crop Circles section. It’s full of useful information and etiquette for visiting the countryside and the crop circles. Please remember that you should not enter any fields without the express permission of the farmer.

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Please Help to keep us Flying in 2018: If you have enjoyed looking at our pictures and information please consider making a small donation to keep us flying. There are so few of us left regularly recording the circles it’s really important that we continue. And while some now use drones to record the circles, it is important that there are still images taken from aircraft where the best quality camera equipment can be used and images that include the broad vista of the landscape can be taken. This kind of photography is expensive and it gets harder with each passing year to raise the funds we need to continue our work, but if everyone who regularly looked at this website made a small donation we would meet the funds we need. You can make a donation here.

NOTE: Some of the images below are beautiful landscape scenes. Click on each image to enlarge them and see the whole picture.

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Geometry Gallery

This formation is constructed by the intersection of three circles. The central one is larger, the two outer circles are smaller, but have identical diameters. An interesting clue to the underlying geometry of the centre circle lies with the relationship between the central circle and its smaller siblings either side. If you look at the four points where the outer two circles intersect with the central circle you’ll see they are in a square pattern. Join these points to draw a square and it fits inside the central circle perfectly, draw a circle within that (that touches the sides of the square) and you’ll find that this circle has a pentagonal relationship to the diameter of the inner most central circle. See the image below for an illustration. I kept this geometry visible in the final painting as it seemed important that it was seen.