Return to introduction or Go to next location The Stones of Bradley – Staffordshire’s Lost Stonehenge?
Stone circles are rare in the Midlands, but Staffordshire may have the remains of one of considerable size in and around the village of Bradley, just over six kilometres to the south-west of the county town of Stafford. Three artificially shaped stones which might be of megalithic origin stand in an alignment along the road which runs north-south through the village. The first is a pointed, elongated boulder that juts at an angle around a metre above the ground with a broken fragment beside it at the entrance to the Red Lion public house car park in the centre of Bradley (SJ 880179). The second is a smoother stone standing beside the road against the wall of the old village post office (SJ 880178), and the third is a longer, thinner stone about a meter-and-a-half tall, known locally as the Webb Stone, which stands next to the road at the entrance to the driveway to some modern houses (SJ 880177). The stones were originally what geologists call erratics, boulders brought here by the glaciers of the last Ice Age, but they have clearly been cut, shaped and deliberately placed in their present positions at some time in the past. They have certainly been recorded here as long ago as records survive, around a thousand years, and experts have speculated that they may once have been a part of what is known as a megalithic complex.
Stone circles were often only a part of a larger complex of standing stones and earthworks which sometimes covered many hectares. Many of the larger stone circles had one or more rows of standing stones connecting them to other megalithic monuments hundreds of meters away, such as smaller stone circles, rings of wooden posts, artificial hillocks and other earthworks. The alignment of stones at Bradley may be the remains of a stone row leading south from the centre of such a complex - possibly a stone circle originally on the site of the parish church - towards what is now Bradley Hall, 1200 metres away, while a second avenue of stones might have led 1200 metres north-east to a circular ditch and embankment earthwork at Littywood. As no archaeological work has been conducted at Littywood, it is at present impossible to say if the earthwork is a megalithic monument or not, but it has been suggested that a large stone at the entrance to the driveway to a house that now stands on the site might have been of megalithic origin. There may well be the remains of other standing stones in the area around Bradley, fallen in hedgerows or lying overgrown in fields, but unfortunately I have not had time to make a proper search. Someone might want to take up the challenge. DirectionsBradley is seven kilometres south, southwest of Stafford, OS Landranger Map 127, grid reference 879177. Links
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The ancient stone circles of the British Isles are one of history’s great unsolved mysteries. Were they ancient calendars, astronomical observatories, open- air temples or something else entirely? Stonehenge is just one of the hundreds of stone circles erected throughout Britain by a Stone Age and early Bronze Age people known as the megalithic culture between 5000 and 3500 years ago. They vary in size from small rings of around a dozen upright stones, less than a metre high, to the largest at Avebury in Wiltshire which is well over 300 metres in diameter and originally comprised of hundreds of stones, some over five metres high and weighing over forty tonnes.