The Sanctuary, nr Avebury, Wiltshire.

The Sanctuary is located close to the Ridgeway at West Overton. It lies beside the A4 which snakes its way between Marlborough and Devizes. The small stone circle dates back to 3000BC and is contemporary with, and an intrinsic part of the Avebury Complex of ancient monuments – which includes West Kennet Longbarrow and Silbury Hill.

The site was first recorded by the antiquarian John Stukeley in the 1600s when it still had some of the small stones placed in several rings. These stones were not of the gargantuan variety found down the road at Avebury, but were very much smaller. Sometime before the 1900’s the stones were removed by a local farmer, so that the land could be used for agriculture, there are small concrete plinths there today which show where the stones would have been placed. Despite the fact no original stones remain the Sanctuary is still a rather charming and peaceful place (when the traffic on the main road is not too busy). It’s open to the public and is a great place for quiet contemplation and meditation. On the opposite side of the road are several bell barrows, known as the Overton Barrows. Some round barrows contained burials, while others are often points of alignments on the landscape.

You can read more about the Sanctuary here (including visiting details) and more about the Overton Barrows here.

The circle here is a simple ringed circle, very similar to some of the very earliest crop circle designs. It will be interesting to investigate whether there is any significant ratio between the diameter of the inner and outer circles. You can see from Steve’s pictures below just how much this simple design fitted-in perfectly with it’s location – rings of stones, round barrows and a ringed crop circle!

Photographic Enlargements: are now available of many of the 2017 crop circles click here to see our fantastic range.

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 field without the express permission of the farmer.

Please Help to keep us Flying in 2017: 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. You could also purchase a photo print of the Sanctuary stone circle here.

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

Image Licencing

We can supply high resolution images of many of our photographs and the sky is the limit as to what they can be used for! Choose from our extensive library or contact us to commission aerial photography for your project.

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Geometry Gallery

The circle here is a simple ringed circle, very similar to some of the very earliest crop circle designs. It will be interesting to investigate whether there is any significant ratio between the diameter of the inner and outer circles.

Update: There appears to be a ratio between the inner and outer circle that allows for a seven pointed star to join the two together. You can see in my diagram that it is slightly off on the bottom of the inner circle, but this is probably the accuracy of my seven-pointed star! Seven is quite difficult to draw accurately with compass and straight-edge as you cannot divide the 360 degrees of a circle into seven whole-number sections (each section is 51.4285714…. etc.).

Seven is the Virginal number (the prophetic aspect of the Divine feminine), the aspect which stands alone and is connected with hidden knowledge and realms (what lies behind the veil). This hidden-ness is what lies at the heart of the crop circle mystery.

Karen currently has a section of her original paintings (from 2017) for sale. Click here to see the paintings available.