Nine Ladies is a Bronze Age

Bronze Age

The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

 stone circle

Stone circle

A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....

 located on Stanton Moor

Stanton Moor

Stanton Moor is a small upland area in the Derbyshire Peak District of central and northern England, lying between Matlock and Bakewell near the villages of Birchover and Stanton-in-Peak. It is known for its megaliths and erratics.-Archaeology:...

, Derbyshire

Derbyshire

Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. A substantial portion of the Peak District National Park lies within Derbyshire. The northern part of Derbyshire overlaps with the Pennines, a famous chain of hills and mountains. The county contains within its boundary of approx...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Part of the Peak District

Peak District

The Peak District is an upland area in central and northern England, lying mainly in northern Derbyshire, but also covering parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, and South and West Yorkshire....

 National Park, the site is owned by English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 and is often visited by tourists and hill walkers. Druids and pagans

Neopaganism

Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...

 occasionally celebrate summer solstice

Midsummer

Midsummer may simply refer to the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, but more often refers to specific European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice, or that take place on a day between June 21 and June 24, and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary between different...

 there.

Description

There are nine upright stones, each of local millstone grit, each less than a metre high sat in clearing in a modern wood planted on Stanton Moor. They sit in a rough circle with a gap at the south side of the circle where no stone-hole has been found. However, an additional stone, lying flat rather than upright, was discovered after being exposed as a cropmark in the dry weather of 1976. It is now visible. The circle is built on an embankment which levelled the local terrain. The small "King Stone" lies forty metres from the circle to the west-south-west and is clearly visible from it.

The Nine Ladies were among the 28 archetypal monuments in England and Wales included in General Pitt-Rivers

Augustus Pitt Rivers

Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers was an English army officer, ethnologist, and archaeologist. He was noted for his innovations in archaeological methods, and in the museum display of archaeological and ethnological collections.-Life and career:Born Augustus Henry Lane-Fox at...

’ Schedule to the first Ancient Monuments Protection Act, which became law in 1882. It was taken into state care the following year.

Quarry protest

The site has been the focus of a long-running environmental protest.

In 1999 Stancliffe Stone Ltd submitted a planning application re-open two dormant quarries

Quarries

Quarries - The "Royal Quarries" — not found in Scripture — is the namegiven to the vast caverns stretching far underneath the northern hill, Bezetha, on which Jerusalem is built. Out of these mammoth caverns stones, a hard limestone, have been quarried in ancient times for the buildings in the...

 (Endcliffe and Lees Cross) on the wooded hillside beside Stanton Moor. The proposed quarry was only 200 m from Nine Ladies, on land owned by Haddon Hall

Haddon Hall

Haddon Hall is an English country house on the River Wye at Bakewell, Derbyshire, one of the seats of the Duke of Rutland, occupied by Lord Edward Manners and his family. In form a medieval manor house, it has been described as "the most complete and most interesting house of [its]...

 estate and leased to Stancliffe Stone.

A local protest group SLAG (Stanton Lees Action Group) was set up to oppose the quarry. The group was joined by environmental protestors who set up a long-running and controversial protest camp. They built many tree houses, from which the inhabitants are hard to evict. The protesters defied a court eviction

Eviction

How you doing???? Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, eviction may also be known as unlawful detainer, summary possession, summary dispossess, forcible detainer, ejectment, and repossession, among other terms...

 order in February 2004, and continued to occupy the site until the winter of 2008-09.

In 2004 the High Court

High Court of Justice

The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...

 classified the two quarries as dormant. This decision was appealed but the classification was upheld in June 2005. This meant that the quarries could not re-open until the Peak District National Park Authority agreed on a set of working conditions for them. In 2008 permission to quarry near the circle was finally revoked

Modern Druid Activity

The site is a popular venue for Pagan worship, particularly around the time of the solstice

Solstice

A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...

s.. In part Pagan protestors helped fight against the quarrying upon the moor. However, the Pagan worshippers at the site are not a unified body and so tensions exist. Some Pagans may leave offerings in the circle, but other druids regard it as litter.

External links

• Nine Ladies page: English Heritage
• Nine Ladies Anti-Quarry Campaign
• Guardian Article: Eco-warriors sense victory in battle to protect Nine Ladies

• The Megalithic Portal Nine Ladies Page
• The Modern Antiquarian Nine Ladies Page