Mysteries of the King’s Men Stone Circle at the Rollright Stones

The King’s Men is the largest and best known of the prehistoric monuments at the Rollright Stones, a prehistoric complex on the Oxfordshire and Warwickshire border. It is one of the most distinctive stone circles in southern England and has attracted visitors, researchers and people interested in the unexplained for generations.
The monument has been approached from very different perspectives. Archaeologists have investigated its prehistoric remains and surrounding landscape, while other investigations have explored unusual physical phenomena and reports of experiences among the stones. Alongside these investigations is a long tradition of what is now described as Earth Mysteries, including accounts of energy patterns and other effects perceived at the site.
This article looks at one particular aspect of that history: a reported spiral pattern within the King’s Men and the experience we had when we decided to follow it for ourselves.
Before getting to that experience, however, it is worth understanding the monument itself.

The King’s Men

The King’s Men is the stone circle within the wider Rollright Stones complex. The complex includes three principal prehistoric monuments: the King’s Men, the Whispering Knights and the King Stone, together with other archaeological features including a cairn and a round barrow.
The King’s Men is the latest of the three principal monuments. The Rollright Trust dates the construction of the circle to around 2500 BC, placing it in the Late Neolithic, while Historic England gives a broader date of approximately 2500 to 2000 BC.
The stones are made of local oolitic limestone. According to the Rollright Trust, the boulders were probably collected from the immediate area, within approximately 500 metres of the monument.
Around seventy stones remain standing today. The original circle may have contained more than one hundred. The stones are unusually close together, producing a dense ring that has sometimes been compared more closely to a stone wall than to circles formed from widely spaced uprights.
The monument we see today has changed considerably since prehistory. Some stones have fallen, while others were re-erected during restoration work in the 19th century. Historic England records restoration in 1882, meaning that the modern arrangement cannot simply be assumed to be identical to the prehistoric arrangement.

The Spiral

I remembered seeing an image of the King’s Men showing a spiral pattern within the stone circle. The drawing stayed in my mind. Later, while looking through material relating to the Rollright Stones, we found a very strong match in the work of Tom Graves, who carried out dowsing investigations at the site during the 1970s.
Graves described patterns of concentric bands within and around the King’s Men. He reported that his dowsing rods reacted as he crossed different bands, which he interpreted as seven concentric rings surrounding the centre of the circle.
In his later work, Graves included a diagram labelled “Rollright: ‘spin’ and internal and external connections”. The diagram shows the circular pattern together with a spiral movement towards the centre and connections extending beyond the circle. Graves interpreted this as a clockwise “spin” associated with the stones.
When we found the diagram, I recognised the image immediately. It was the spiral I remembered.
The drawing was not presented as a route for visitors to follow. It was a representation of a pattern Graves had perceived through his investigations at the site. We were intrigued by the idea of physically following that pattern through the circle, so we decided to try it for ourselves.

Following the Spiral

We were not attempting to reproduce a scientific experiment, and we were not trying to prove that the spiral represented an energy field. We simply wanted to experience it.
The timing was significant only because we happened to be there extremely early. The sun was just appearing when we began. We entered the circle and followed the spiral towards its centre.
During the walk itself, nothing dramatic happened. It was only after we had completed the walk and left the circle that the sensations began to become noticeable. Both of us experienced tingling in our hands, particularly towards the tips of our fingers. At the same time, there was an unusual sense of calm. It was difficult to put into words, but we both noticed it. Rob also felt slightly shaky after we had walked away from the circle. Neither of us was tired, and the walk itself had not been physically demanding.
The tingling remained for a considerable time after we had left the circle. It eventually disappeared roughly an hour later. We had experienced a similar tingling around Avebury previously. That does not mean the two experiences had the same cause, but the similarity made the Rollright experience particularly noticeable to us.
There was simply a collection of sensations that both of us noticed and discussed, followed by the question that naturally comes after any unexplained experience: What caused it?
**Charles Brooker and the Magnetic Spiral**
When we began looking more deeply into the history of the King’s Men, one name appeared repeatedly: Charles Brooker.
Brooker was an engineer who investigated the Rollright Stones using a magnetometer. His work was published in *New Scientist* in January 1983 under the title “Magnetism and the Standing Stones”. Accounts of his investigation describe magnetic measurements at the King’s Men that revealed a pattern associated with the interior of the circle, including a spiral or series of concentric rings.
The Rollright Trust also discusses Brooker's work in its account of the site's Earth Mysteries. According to the Trust, Brooker recorded fluctuating magnetic readings and identified a spiral of magnetic change beginning at the centre of the King’s Men. The Trust notes similarities between this pattern and the concentric patterns previously reported through dowsing.
This made the image I had remembered even more interesting. The spiral was not only something that had been described through dowsing. There was also an investigation in which magnetic measurements had produced a pattern that was interpreted as having similarities to those earlier observations.
There is also a more conventional archaeological geophysical record at the Rollrights.

Geophysical Surveys of the Site

Magnetometry is a standard archaeological technique used to investigate buried features. Changes in magnetic properties can reveal pits, ditches, hearths and other archaeological remains that cannot be seen from the surface.
The Rollright complex has also been subjected to archaeological geophysical investigation. Historic England's Ancient Monuments Laboratory carried out geophysical surveys at the Rollrights between 1982 and 1986, including magnetometer and resistivity surveys. More detailed investigation was undertaken over the King’s Men. The purpose was to investigate the archaeological remains and understand more about the prehistoric monument and its surroundings.
These surveys add another layer to the history of investigation at the King’s Men. They show that the magnetic environment of the monument has been examined using established archaeological methods, alongside the earlier investigations by dowsers and Charles Brooker's magnetometer work.
The different investigations were looking for different things, and they produced different kinds of observations. Taken together, they form part of a much longer attempt to understand what lies within the circle and how the monument relates to its surrounding landscape.
For us, this makes the King’s Men particularly interesting. There are things that can be measured, things that people have perceived through dowsing, things that visitors report experiencing, and questions that remain open between them.

Earth Mysteries

Magnetism is only part of the story. The Rollright Trust has documented a much wider history of what it calls the site's Earth Mysteries. This includes reports of energy patterns identified through dowsing, magnetic investigations, radiation measurements and other unusual physical observations.
One particularly interesting series of investigations involved the Dragon Project, which investigated unusual phenomena at several ancient sites, including the Rollright Stones. At the Rollrights, the project carried out investigations at both the King Stone and the King’s Men.
According to the Rollright Trust, unusual readings were recorded around the King Stone at sunrise, with observations varying according to the season. The Trust also records investigations within the King’s Men at the summer solstice.
This is interesting to us because our experience happened inside the King’s Men around sunrise. We are not suggesting that the Dragon Project's investigations explain what happened to us, because their observations were made under different circumstances. But they show that unusual physical conditions at the Rollright Stones have been investigated before, including at the King’s Men itself.
We still do not know whether any of these things are connected.

The Human Experience of Megaliths

Our experience also made us interested in research into how people physically experience ancient monuments.
This is not limited to modern stories about earth energy. Research has examined the relationship between the human body, sensory perception and megalithic landscapes. Yael Dansac's research at the megalithic monuments of Carnac in Brittany, for example, examined bodily interactions and sensory experiences among people participating in contemporary practices around the stones. Her work was published in the *Journal of Religion in Europe* and approaches the subject through sensory ethnography and the study of embodiment.
Participants in the research described sensations including tingling, vibration, heat, cold, heaviness and lightness. Some practices involved deliberately approaching megaliths while paying attention to bodily sensations.
The research does not attempt to establish what causes these sensations. What it shows is that the physical experiences people have at megalithic monuments can themselves be studied and documented. It also leaves open the possibility that there are aspects of the relationship between people and ancient monuments that we do not yet fully understand. 

The Mystery of the King’s Men

The more we looked into the King’s Men, the more complex its history of investigation became. Dowsing, magnetic measurements, archaeological geophysics and research into human experiences at megalithic sites each offer different ways of approaching the same landscape.
Perhaps some of the phenomena reported at ancient monuments have straightforward physical explanations. Perhaps some are connected to environmental conditions that we do not yet fully understand. Perhaps what people describe as earth energy represents something that has not yet been adequately understood or measured. There may also be experiences that are shaped by human perception, attention and expectation.
We do not know.
What we do know is that the King’s Men has been attracting questions for much longer than we realised. Some of those questions can be investigated with instruments. Others begin with something much more personal: what do you actually experience when you stand among the stones?
Perhaps that is a question worth asking ourselves before deciding how to explain what we experienced.

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