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Image MICHAEL HUBBARD Copyright 2000

Aerial photograph by DAVID RUSSELL © 2000

Click on thumbnails to enlarge.

Ground photographs by ANDY THOMAS © 2000

Effectively two back-to-back arcing paths with superimposed circles, this attractive fractal-looking pattern is composed of 21 anticlockwise circles in all. A 36’ circle sits at the centre of the arcs while four tails, each of five decreasing circles (averaged at 22’, 18’, 12’, 9’ and 7’), flow outwards. From furthest tip to furthest tip, the formation spans 200’.

The formation lies in a very late crop of barley just west of the country road which runs from the down land beauty spot Ditchling Beacon to Patcham, not far from where it meets the A27. A very good view of the formation can be had from this road.

The design is crisply defined and the wispy swirls of barley attractive. The arcs which form the skeleton of the design are clearly visible as paths creating the backbone for all the circles, like the Stonehenge fractal of 1996. They underlie the circles, but also act as overtly integral pathways in between. There are in fact four paths forming the arcs, not two continuous ones, each laid running outwards from a clear starting point in the central circle. The largest circles of the two ‘tails’ on each side actually touch, merging with each other (see photo), forming a sort of vesica pisces. Where this occurs, the lay of the easternmost circle superimposes the western one.

As with the Sompting formation at West Sussex reported two days previously, this pattern also displays examples of individual wheat stems swept into the lay of the formation from behind standing unaffected stalks, an unlikely, if not impossible effect to create by the use of any mechanical instrument.

Patcham was once a major Sussex circle hotspot, particularly in the early 1990’s (see the book Fields of Mystery, S B Publications 1996), but this is the first visit from the phenomenon since a single rape circle appeared in 1995, one field north of this new arrival.

Report by ANDY THOMAS of Southern Circular Research

Just to let you know. I discovered a new formation near Patcham, Brighton at the w/end. It lays a mile or two south of Ditchling Beacon on the South Downs, right near where the Ditchling road joins the Brighton by-pass. It consists of one large circle then two slightly smaller adjacent to it and
then four 'arms' of smaller circles decreasing in size towards the ends. Very pretty. As I was the first to arrive I can say with all certainty that it was not a hoax. After all. Why bother? Crop circles are so passé aren't they? Obviously Mother Nature isn't a fashion victim!

Reported by Ross Woodhouse.