The Book Garden Blog

This set of standing stones near Keswick may not be the largest or oldest in the British Isles, but set in such a majestic backdrop of being surrounded by mountains on all sides it surely makes it one of the most impressive.
It’s quite an unusual group of stones due to the fact there is no evidence of outliers, stones which are placed outside of the main circle. Almost all groups of standing stones are found to have outliers and many believe that these were for the surpose of celstial alignments with the stones. These standing stones in the Lake District have no known outliers, some theorise that the outliers have been removed long ago, others belive that it was not actually constructed with outliers originally and that the peaks and fell tops around the stone circle actually mark the outliers of the stones. If this latter theory is correct, though it would be difficult to prove without time-travel, this would make Castlerigg Stone Circle possibly the biggest stone circle in the world with a diameter between outliers of several miles! In fact sunrise during the Autumn equinox appears over the top of Threlkeld Knott, a hill 3.5 km to the east.
It is also worth mentioning that some references to this megalithic monument record the presence of a single outlier. Though they do not record that it only appeared in the early 20th Century after being erected by a local farmer, and shows signs of being repeatedly struck by a plough.
Wikipedia errouneously makes a claim about it being impossible to count the stones. Quite an easy task and the National Trust number them at 40, though others record the numbers of 38-42. This myth about counting them is likely to have evolved from myth’s surrounding the nearby ‘Long Meg & her daughters’, near Penrith, a much larger circle with many more stones. The myth here is more developed with an addition that if you did manage to correctly count the number of stones then you would become one of them! Perhaps luckily that stone circle is set on private land and visitors are not encouraged!