Site Name: Steeple Barton

Site Location: North Oxfordshire
Related Achive: Manning

The Hoar Stone is one of the sites Manning documented in Steeple Barton.

'The Hoar Stone' in Steeple Barton parish was almost certainly a burial mound, a round or more likely, a long barrow. It was broken up for roadstone by a tenant farmer in 1843. The new owner of Barton Abbey, Mr. H. Hall (of Hall's Brewery family) gathered all the broken stones together and enclosed them with iron railings.

"Demolition of 'cromlech'" was recorded in Potts MSS and "ruin of Druicidal altar" was recorded in Gardner's and Kelly's directories. A nineteenth century description (before it was demolished) reads "2 side-pieces and a lintel, probably a simple terminal chamber or blind entrance".

The iron railings have long gone, but the stones are still visible from the main Banbury to Oxford road, on the west side of the road by Hopcrofts Holt.

References:

O.G.S. Crawford, Long Barrows of the Cotwolds, p215