Featured

January 20, 2026 •7:03

The Nine Ladies: Stones, Sorcery & Protest

0:00 / 7:03

Tonight's Episode

EPISODE 3 — “The Nine Ladies: Stones, Sorcery & Protest”

On Stanton Moor, a small stone circle sits low among the heather — modest in size, rich in stories. Known as the Nine Ladies, this Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age monument has been reimagined repeatedly across four thousand years: as pagan temple, as Christian cautionary tale, as Victorian druidic relic, and — most recently — as the focus of a modern environmental protest.

In this episode, we explore how archaeology, folklore, and activism collide on a single patch of moorland, and why small monuments sometimes accumulate the largest meanings.

Hidden Derbyshire: Landscapes of Time

A documentary storytelling podcast about the places where history, folklore, and landscape intersect.

**Primary Archaeology & Landscape Sources**

* **Barnatt, John** (1990). *The Henges, Stone Circles and Ringcairns of the Peak District*.

— Includes Nine Ladies & Stanton Moor cairn complex.

* **Barnatt & Collis (eds.)** (1996). *Barrows in the Peak District*.

— Covers cairns, ring cairns, typology, and landscape sequencing.

* **Barnatt & Smith** (2004). *The Peak District: Landscapes Through Time*.

— Essential landscape archaeology context.

* **Derbyshire Archaeological Journal** (19th–20th c. volumes).

— Antiquarian field notes, early measurements, cairn mapping.

* **Historic England Scheduling Notes** — Nine Ladies + King Stone + associated cairns.

— Official designation, context, and landscape assessment.

### **Chronology Notes**

* Assigned to **Late Neolithic / Early Bronze Age (c. 2200–1500 BC)** via:

✔ comparative typology of small stone circles

✔ proximity to round cairns (Bronze Age funerary)

✔ absence of later intrusive features

* No major excavation; dating remains inferential not direct.

**Comparative Monument Clusters**

Useful parallels for scale & function:

* **Merry Maidens** (Cornwall)

* **Bodmin Moor Circles** (Cornwall)

* **Burnmoor Circles** (Cumbria)

* **Rollright Stones** (Oxfordshire)

— Most share folklore of petrification, dancing, or taboo-breaking.

**Folklore & Victorian Reimagining**

* Christian petrification legend (19th c.) attested in:

— **Glover, S. (1829). *History of Derbyshire*.**

— regional antiquarian society papers

* Victorian Druid revival influence:

— “sabbath dancers”, “fiddler/king stone” motif

— aligns Nine Ladies with pan-British folklore template

**Modern History: Quarry Dispute & Protest**

* Quarry expansion proposals (late 20th–early 21st c.) led to:

✔ long-term protest camp

✔ treehouses & makeshift dwellings

✔ collaboration between druids, environmentalists, walkers & locals

✔ protracted planning & legal process

* Reported in:

— Local & regional press (Derbyshire Times, Peak Advertiser)

— BBC regional coverage

— Archaeology & heritage advocacy (Council for British Archaeology)

— Heritage conservation casework files (Historic England, NPA)

**Consensus Statements**

Most archaeologists agree:

✔ Nine Ladies belongs to prehistoric ritual landscape of Stanton Moor

✔ Cairns → funerary; circle → ceremonial

✔ King Stone = outlier marking threshold/procession

✔ Folklore overlays are post-medieval & Victorian

✔ Monument significance = cumulative, not singular

### **Open Interpretive Questions**

Still debated or unknown:

• Function: ritual vs procession vs social gathering

• Astronomical or calendrical alignments (inconclusive)

• Relationship between cairns & circle (sequence/ritual choreography)

• Why small-scale circles persist across Britain despite regional variation

*Accessible Public Sources**

For general audiences:

* Peak District National Park Heritage Pages

* Friends of the Peak District / CPRE materials

* Buxton Museum Prehistory collections

* Visitor guides for Stanton Moor & Nine Ladies

* Local walking books (often surprisingly well researched)

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

[SPEAKER_00]: they say the stones were once women.

[SPEAKER_00]: Dancers caught McReville on a Sunday, turned to a rock for their sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Fiddler who played them still stands nearby, froze in two for tempting them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Folklore has a talent for punishment.

[SPEAKER_00]: If our below-feel ceremonial, a mini-low-feel ancestral, the nine ladies feel domestic.

[SPEAKER_00]: The circle sits low and gentle on stunted more, surrounded by bilbery and heather.

[SPEAKER_00]: The stones barely knee high, weather worn and onus-hubing.

[SPEAKER_00]: No grand ditch, no high bank, no distant views across half the county, just a clearing in the heather, where time settles instead of blows.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are nine stones, though in truth there are ten, if you count the outlier, known as the Kingstone, the short walk away.

[SPEAKER_00]: The circle is small, roughly ten meters across.

[SPEAKER_00]: The stones are squat, almost a mystic in scale, as if made for children or spirits rather than kings or ancestors.

[SPEAKER_00]: This modesty is misled tourists for a century, as if monuments must be large to matter.

[SPEAKER_00]: But size is a modern concern,

[SPEAKER_00]: The circle itself likely dates to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age.

[SPEAKER_00]: 2,200 to 1,500 BC.

[SPEAKER_00]: A period when stone circles appear across Britain.

[SPEAKER_00]: Often alongside the First Messlework, early roundhouses, and changing burial practices.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like our below, nine ladies has never undergone a major excavation.

[SPEAKER_00]: It offers no tidy trench diagrams.

[SPEAKER_00]: No stratigraphic secrets, no boxes of labelled fine sitting in museum stores.

[SPEAKER_00]: So archaeologists work backwards, comparing the circle to sites that have already been excavated, and noting similarities in diameter, stone morphology and placement.

[SPEAKER_00]: one clean is scale.

[SPEAKER_00]: Small stone circles of roughly seven to twelve meters across are found in Cumbripe, Wales and Scotland, often in turqued as place of gatherings, ceremony, or calendrical observation rather than civic assembly or grand ritual.

[SPEAKER_00]: You put them in close proximity

[SPEAKER_00]: And then there is the Kingstone, the low and outlier.

[SPEAKER_00]: Outliers in stone circles are rarely decorative.

[SPEAKER_00]: They mark direction, arrival, boundary or station.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some scholars argue they function as waypoints.

[SPEAKER_00]: Stop here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Face this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Start the ritual here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Others argue they frame a celestial event.

[SPEAKER_00]: Though nine ladies with this clear astronomical alignment.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is modest, not monumental, and its precision, if any, is subtle.

[SPEAKER_00]: What supplety does not mean in significance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Prehistoric monuments were not built for tourists or posters or drones.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were built for communities who already knew what they were looking at.

[SPEAKER_00]: The landscape was their calendar, their archive, their cathedral.

[SPEAKER_00]: The name nine ladies comes from a 19th century legend.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nine women danced on the Sabbath and were petrified for their entirety.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their fiddler punished as a king stone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Variants exist all over Britain.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Mary Maiden's in Cornwall.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Hurlers in Botmund.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Roll Wright stones in Oxfordshire.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has Christian templates laid over pagan architecture, turned the sacred into a warning, the ritual into sin, but folklore has its own logic.

[SPEAKER_00]: If the nine ladies have persisted only as archaeology, they might have been forgotten, folklore kept them alive.

[SPEAKER_00]: the most dramatic chapter in Stone Circle's recent life, came not from archaeology or folklore, but from industry.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the late 20th century, plans to expand sandstone quarry and stand to more threatened the monument and its surrounding care.

[SPEAKER_00]: Environmental activists drew its walkers, local residents, and heritage campaigners formed a coalition.

[SPEAKER_00]: A long-term protest camp emerged in the woods, treehouses, tents, makeshift cabins suspended between the dunks.

[SPEAKER_00]: It became one of Britain's most unusual conservation battles.

[SPEAKER_00]: Prehistoric landscape, versus modern extraction, folk ritual, thief planning law.

[SPEAKER_00]: The quarry plans were eventually halted.

[SPEAKER_00]: The stones endured.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you stand in the nine ladies today, you stand in a palm-sessed of beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: Neolithic architecture, Victorian Judaism, Christian caution, and modern environmentalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: Very few monuments accumulate such strange overlapping meanings.

[SPEAKER_00]: The stones no longer belong to their builders, they belong to everyone who ever imagined their purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: The sun sets quickly on the stand-in wall, the head that absorbs light, the trees become silhouettes, some visitors leave at this point, others stay, waiting for the moment when the stones stop looking like stones and start looking like people again.

[SPEAKER_00]: This has been Hidden Arbyshire, Landscapes of Time.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoyed the journey, follow the show and share it with Swan who loves history, folklore, or a good mystery.

[SPEAKER_00]: New episodes each week.

[SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, walk gently and listen closely.