found that some of the stones were up to in length. It is possible that there were stone rows or avenues connecting to the circle. In the 1890s, Passmore recorded a line of five stones leading towards the north of the circle, which might have represented such an avenue, although by the 21st century these stones were also gone. In March 2009, work overseen by the Highways Agency revealed two large sarsen boulders opposite Day House Farm. Commenting on the state of the circle in 1980, the archaeologist Aubrey Burl stated that the circle was "almost completely overgrown", an assessment he repeated in 2000. The Historic England listing for the site nevertheless considered it to be a "comparatively well preserved example of its class". Antiquarian and archaeological research The earliest known antiquarian observation of Day House Lane Stone Circle came from about 1867 when the naturalist and writer Richard Jefferies described coming across it. He was familiar with the area, and his wife had spent some of her early years living at Day House Farm. His comments on the circle would be published posthumously in the 1896 book Jefferies' Land: A History of Swindon and Its Environs. Jeffries related that he had found "five Sarsden [sic] stones much sunk into the ground, but forming a semi-circle of which the lane is the base-line or tangent. There was a sixth upon the edge of the lane, but it was blown up and removed, in order to make the road more serviceable, a few years ago." He suggested that it looked like a "Druidical" circle and might have been made by the druids, but noted that whether this was the case or not "cannot now be determined". Jefferies also observed that in an adjacent field, which was known as the Plain, could be found three more sarsens, one of which was much larger than the others. A. D. Passmore's investigation The antiquarian A. D. Passmore outlined his investigation of the stone circle in an 1894 article for the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine. As part of this he thanked W. Handy, the tenant of Day House Farm, for "the kind way in which he has allowed me to explore his fields". In his private notebooks he related that he first discovered them in January 1893. Passmore related that at that time all of the stones in the circle were prostrate and