How Many Stone Circles Are There In Britain?

There are around 900 stone circles in England; many are identified as such but several remain undefined as either circles or unknown monuments. This makes specifying their exact quantitative number difficult to ascertain. Many were destroyed by later civilizations as well.

Some of the most common or prominent examples of stone circles are Swinside and Castlerigg stone circles in Lake district, Long Meg with her daughters in Cumbria, Stonehenge in Salisbury plain, Avebury in Wilts, Wayland's Smithy, The Cerne Abbas Giant in Dorset and many other ones in Cornwall. It is not certain what they were specifically intended for, but tribal meeting areas, ritual and religious sites and even nodes of lay lines passing through the earth are some of the various purposes attributed to them. Some are constructed on top of burial chambers and most date back a couple of thousand years.

There are around a thousand known or identified stone circles across the British Isles.
Have a look at the Megalithic Map at www.megalith.ukf.net which was created in conjunction with Aubrey Burl to plot all the known circles and stone rows of the British Isles [includes the whole of Ireland].
The map is a great resource and is divided into 100 kil. Sqaures.
Stone circles are found from Shetland down to southern Britain but have an interesting distribution with no recordings of this monument type in some areas. The area around the wash is a blankk as far as this monument type for example.
The British Isles is outstanding in Europe for this type of monument - the original fifure for stone circles was probably much higher but landuse has destroyed many archaeological sites.
Most people know about Stone Henge which was originally a wooden construction, in Phase I radio carbon dates are around 3,1000BC. The Stenness circle on Orkney is just as impressive, dating from around 3,000 BC making it also one of the earliest inn Britain whilst the ring of Brodgar near Stenness is approximately the same date .
The map noted above is well worth having a look at and the distribution poses alot of questions for archaeologists as we ask why were these circles constructed in some areas and not in others?