Crop circle at Old Winchester Hill, Nr Warnford. Hampshire. Reported 13th May.

Old Winchester Hill, Nr Warnford. Hampshire.
Reported 12th May.

Updated Tuesday 22nd May 2001

FIRST BRITISH CROP CIRCLE OF THE SEASON!

HAMPSHIRE TAKES THE SCOOP!

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This is the first report of the season, and very welcomed it is! It will be a temporary report, but we can confirm that it is there! We do have slightly conflicting info at the moment, but have pieced together something which should be sufficient for the meantime. On Monday the 14th, we received the first report of its whereabouts from Bob Howard. Bob told us that it was in Oil Seed Rape, and there are three simple circles. He discovered the circles on the 13th May. Then a couple of hours later, we also received another report from a James Andrews,

who confirmed the sighting the day before, on the 12th of May, and told us it was an arrangement of circles and rings..

So, we now know it is an actual crop circle event, with an arrangement of three circles.

The last report on Monday, was from Peter Harrison, who gave us the most comprehensive report, with an actual description of its orientation to Old Winchester Hill. It is situated on the North East side of the hill, and is definitely in flowering Oil Seed Rape (Canola). So, we now know it is an actual event, with an arrangement of three circles, with possibly rings incorporated?

We must inform anyone who is planning to go and see the first event, not to take for granted that the general public have access to this field. Lets not forget the Foot and Mouth situation is still with us, so we must all at responsibly. Further information we have been given, is that Old Winchester Hill is still closed, and there are Foot &Mouth signs everywhere. Hopefully the circle can be viewed from the road, which may be the only option at the moment. A full report will be online, before the end of next weekend.

Report by Stuart Dike

This formation is located just to the South East of Old Winchester Hill near to West Meon, Hampshire. It is an area often frequented by the phenomenon and is close to Hen Wood, Teglease Down and Lippen Lane, all sites where formations have appeared over the last few years. The proximity of all these sites to Old Winchester Hill, round barrows and a near by longbarrow is interesting, as Hampshire has very few monuments of such an age within it's borders compared with Wiltshire which has many.

The circle is situated in an oil seed rape (canola) field just below the Old Winchester Hill itself, making for a very nice landscape scene indeed. It is very difficult to get any where close to this formation as Old Winchester Hill and it's surrounding public countryside are closed due to precautions pertaining to foot and mouth disease. In fact the circle is only visible from one very small country lane which goes from Teaglease Down to Exton. The formation appears to be a double ringed circle of about 100ft in diameter. The outer of these rings being reasonably wide. The view is quite oblique, so it is just possible that there are other details to this pattern that we couldn't see from this
view point. We would approximate that the formation is around half a mile from this road,

had Old Winchester Hill been open, we would have got a very good view into the formation from the top of the hill. It was difficult to say from this distance how old this formation was. It was probably a few days old (possibly as much as a week) as it wasn't quite as crisp as brand new formations generally are.

Karen Douglas & Steve Alexander