Rollright Stones

Coordinates: 51°58′32″N 1°34′15″W / 51.975534°N 1.570814°W / 51.975534; -1.570814

The Rollright Stones is a complex of three Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments near the village of Long Compton on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire in the English Midlands. Constructed from local oolitic limestone, the three monuments now known as the King's Men, the King Stone and the Whispering Knights, are distinct in their design and purpose, and were built at different periods in late prehistory. The stretch of time during which the three monuments were erected bears witness to a continuous tradition of ritual behaviour on sacred ground, from the 4th to the 2nd millennium BCE.

The first to be constructed was the Whispering Knights, a dolmen that dates to the Early or Middle Neolithic period and which was likely to have been used as a place of burial. This was followed by the King's Men, a stone circle which was constructed in the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age; unusually, it has parallels to other circles located further north, in the Lake District, implying a trade-based or ritual connection. The third monument, the King Stone, is a single monolith, and although it is not known when it was constructed, the dominant theory amongst archaeologists is that it was a Bronze Age grave marker.

Rollright

Coordinates: 51°59′06″N 1°31′59″W / 51.985°N 1.533°W / 51.985; -1.533 Rollright is a civil parish in West Oxfordshire, England. It contains the villages of Great Rollright and Little Rollright and some of the prehistoric Rollright Stones. The parish is on West Oxfordshire's boundary with Cherwell District and Oxfordshire's boundary with Warwickshire.

The name is thought to derive from the Old English Hrolla-landriht meaning "the land of Hrolla".

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