Chesterton Windmill, nr Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

Details: This circle was reported on the 26th of July and is in a field immediately adjacent to Chesterton Windmill, nr the village of Chesterton Green, just a few miles south of Royal Leamington Spa in Warwickshire. The formation measures approximately 200ft in diameter and is a 6-fold star (or windmill) design, with some interesting design features. The circle is in a field of very mature wheat and contains some very pretty floor-lays in several of its circular components.

Location: Chesterton Windmill had a unique and very attractive design. Built in 1632-33, the windmill itself sits on top of a circular building with six arches. Some have speculated that it may have originally been designed as an observatory, as its designer Sir Edward Peyto was acquainted with several notable architects of the day. The mill was operation until 1910  when its machinery ceased to function. You can read more about this fascinating building here.

Visiting: As yet, there is no indication that this circle is open to public – if this changes we’ll update this page. Until then, please keep out of the field unless you have express permission from the farmer to enter. Please assume there is no permission until any is granted. Thank you.

Flight: This was a long way for us to go to record a crop circle and as you’ll see in the images below the weather was not particularly kind. After weeks of hot, sunny and fine weather, it is set to turn thundery over the next few days across the UK. So we decided we had to fly this one ASAP before the weather turned stormy and in case the field was cut as harvesting is now in full swing!

Design & Symbolism: This is a six-armed stylised star. Each arm is like an old-fashioned dumbbell crop circle design – seen in the early 1990s – one arm even has a ‘key’ another classical design feature. They also each have a series of 4 boxes, two each side of each arm – yet another feature from the classic crop circle design canon. However, it is also mixed with more modern design features such as multi-directional lays and weaving of the crop; the centre circle of the formation contains a beautiful six-armed star (or flower) woven into the laid crop. The design of the arms also has thin, standing pathways within them, something we saw in several formations last year (2017) at; Cherhill, Stanton St Bernard and Langdean Bottom. While the Chesterton Windmill has only 4 blades (or sails) and the crop circle has six arms, one is not a perfect reflection of the other, but the fact that the circle does have arms around a central circle does seem to echo the windmill in a strange way. Th fact that we have a modern-day crop circle next to an historical site – and that the formation itself is a mixture of classic, traditional design and modern, complex features – does give this formation a sense of being something that bridges time and place; history with present-day. It’s a also a very timely reminder of what a rich and fascinating history the crop circle phenomenon has and how many, only just coming to this subject, will know very little of the early days of the circles and their rich history and culture.

See the Geometry Gallery below for drawings and further analysis.

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 circle was extremely satisfying to draw and it took several hours over three or four days to complete it. It’s airy six-fold design looks incredibly attractive on paper. I decided to idealise the boxes alongside the arms, they were quite irregular and varied in the actual formation – but along a theme. However, I’m pleased with this rendering and I think it was a great formation. There are also some nice Phi proportions in this design, no doubt a product of the relationship between the lengths of the arms and the circles. This is part of what makes it look so well proportioned.

Six is known as the number of ‘Structure, Function and Order’, also Economy and Perfection. It is one of the most common numbers found in crop circle design. Pythagoras considered it the perfect number, and the intimate way in which it is connected with circular geometry, made it of a perfected order. Anyone who had played with a compass on paper will quickly learn that division of a circle by six, then 12 and 24… is effortless because of the way this can become without changing the diameter of the compass, and not only that, simple repetitive protocols make ever expanding, and ever more complex patterns simply child’s play.