Quinta Stone Circle

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Thu, 06/11/2025 - 00:00

Last year I stayed at Quinta Hall in Shropshire for a week’s Bible study with fellow pastors. Afforded a little free time each day, I inspected the Ordnance Survey and forayed into the surrounding countryside to see what could be unearthed. Not far from the Hall at Temple Woods was a stone circle. It was clearly not ancient, though it was contrived with some regard for ones that were. Despite being only mid-nineteenth century, it is still a ‘listed’ monument, the normally rather dry Historic England explanation stating:

Stone Circle… Shown on O.S. map as Temple. Sham stone circle. Circa 1850-60 for the owner of The Quinta. Limestone. Similar in plan to Stonehenge with outer circle of orthostats, surmounted by continuous curving lintel, comprising linked capstones, several of which have now fallen, enclosing an inner U-shaped arrangement of trilithons, some paired. Many of the uprights have drill-holes and the lintels are fixed by means of iron ties. The stone circle is partially ruinuous but this may well have been the original intention.

-emphases mine.

'Ruinous' from the start, and a 'sham' throughout. I think the stone circle of Temple Woods rather pleasant, and well worth the short walk. If the oldest, ‘authentic’ stone circles were built as temples to anyone other than the Living God, however, they are just as sham as the 'new' one in Shropshire. And if they offered devotion to idols, they made their worshippers’ lives ruinous well before they themselves fell into decay.

False religion, whether it be ancient or modern, is a sham: fraudulent, useless and shameful; it is ruined, ruinous and ruining.