Winchester

Cheesefoot Head and the First Crop Circles

Circles in wheat began appearing in Hampshire and Wiltshire in the late seventies; they were explained by plasma vortices, landing craft and earth energies, and by the end of the eighties scientists and television crews were driving out to the fields. On 9 September 1991 the newspaper Today printed the confession of two pensioners from Southampton, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley: they had been making the circles at night since 1978, starting near Cheesefoot Head, where Bower had bet in a pub that he could cause a commotion. The tool was a plank on a rope pulled with the foot, and a wire sight on a cap to keep the line straight. In front of reporters they made a circle that the leading researcher Pat Delgado immediately pronounced genuine.