Flagstones Enclosure

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox ancient site Flagstones is a late Neolithic interrupted ditch enclosure (similar to a causewayed enclosure) on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, England. It derives its name from having been discovered beneath the site of the demolished Flagstones House.<ref name="mp">Flagstones Enclosure at the Megalithic Portal, accessed 13 April 2015</ref> Half of it was excavated in the 1980s when the Dorchester by-pass was built; the rest of it still exists under the grounds of Max Gate, Thomas Hardy's house.

The Druid Stone

In March 1891 workmen were digging under the lawn at Thomas Hardy's house at Max Gate when they discovered a large sarsen stone Template:Convert underground.<ref name="hardy">Template:Cite book</ref> It took seven men with levers to raise the stone which had been lying flat.<ref name="hardy"/> Around the stone was a quantity of ashes and half-charred bones.<ref name="hardy"/> Hardy called it "The Druid Stone" and had it erected at the edge of the lawn where it still stands;<ref name="millgate">Template:Cite book</ref> he wrote about the stone in his poem "The Shadow on the Stone".<ref name="mezey">Template:Cite book</ref> It was only when the enclosure was discovered in the 1980s that it was realised that the sarsen stone came from a larger monument.<ref name="millgate"/>

Excavations

The excavation plan of the western half of the Neolithic Flagstones Enclosure<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Around half of the enclosure was excavated in 1987.<ref name="pastscape">Template:Cite PastScape</ref> The part of the enclosure in the grounds of Flagstones House was excavated by Wessex Archaeology, and then the grounds were totally removed to make a deep cutting for the Dorchester by-pass road.<ref name="mp"/> The other half still exists under the grounds of Max Gate.<ref name="mp"/>

The enclosure comprised a circular ring of unevenly spaced pits constructed in the late 4th millennium BC.<ref name="pastscape"/> The chalk walls of some of the pit/ditch segments featured engraved designs, probably cut with flint.<ref name="pastscape"/> An adult cremation and two child inhumations were found at the bottom of ditch sections, each beneath a slab of sandstone or sarsen.<ref name="pastscape"/> A young man had been buried in a later Early Bronze Age tumulus in the centre of the enclosure.<ref name="pastscape"/> Carbon dating of the remains put the building of the enclosure at around 3486–2886 BC with the central burial dating to around a thousand years later.<ref name="mp"/> The central mound seems to have subsequently acted as a focus for much flint-knapping.<ref name="pastscape"/>

Mount Pleasant henge, a henge enclosure measuring Template:Cvt along its long axis, lies around 500 metres to the east, and another henge Maumbury Rings, with a diameter of (Template:Cvt, is about 1500 metres to the west.

In September 2024, the Flagstones enclosure was listed as a scheduled monument by the National Trust, and in April 2025, Time Team reported that new radiocarbon dates from the site are approximately three hundred years older than Stonehenge, raising questions about which monument came first.<ref name="bbc24">Template:Cite news</ref>

Further reading

• Roland J. C. Smith, 1997, Excavations along the Route of the Dorchester Bypass, Dorset Wessex Archaeology Report