Doll Tor is a stone circle just west of Stanton Moor, near the village of Birchover, Derbyshire in the English East Midlands.

Doll Tor is part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE.

These remains were often though not always placed in ceramic urns, and were sometimes deposited alongside other material such as flint tools, small pieces of bronze, and faience beads.

Doll Tor stands on the western flank of Stanton Moor,[1] half a mile north of the village of Birchover in Derbyshire.

[7] By 3000 BCE, the long barrows, causewayed enclosures, and cursuses that had predominated in the Early Neolithic were no longer built, and had been replaced by circular monuments of various kinds.

[12] Across eastern Britain—including the East Midlands—stone circles are far less common than in the west of the island, possibly because of the general scarcity of naturally occurring stone here.

[21] At an unknown point in time, drystone walling was added to the circle, used to connect the six standing orthostats;[22] this largely comprised flat stones.

[25] This use of stone circles for burials has been noted at other locations across the Midlands and Northeast England;[26] Burl suggests that these examples reflect "the conversion of an ancient sanctuary into a later sepulchre".

[28] The 1930s excavations also revealed an area of charcoal mixed with pieces of ceramic decorated with long straight lines and the bones of a child.

[30] At the southwestern side of the circle, further charcoal was found close to the orthostat, interpreted as the remains of a cremation in which the human bone had been utterly incinerated.

They then borrowed a spade and hack from a nearby farm, using these to dig into the centre of the circle, revealing the broken remains of either three of four cinerary urns and what they interpreted as "incense cups.

"[35] In his 1861 book Ten Years Diggings in Celtic and Saxon Grave-Hills in the Counties of Derby, Stafford and York, Bateman subsequently produced the first written record of the stone circle's existence.

[37] The duo also recovered cremated human remains, which they showed to Miss M. L. Tildesley of the Royal College of Surgeons, as well as several beads, which they had analysed by Mr. H. C.

[38] By the late 1930s, the finds were still in the possession of J. P. Heathcote at his Birchover home,[38] although by the early 21st century were in the care of the Weston Park Museum.

In their 2007 study of modern Pagan uses of British archaeological sites, the scholars Robert Wallis and Jenny Blain noted that Doll Tor was "clearly a ritual centre for one or more groups today".

[40] They noted that these visitors sometimes placed offerings such as flowers and fir cones at Doll Tor, although they added that this site did not attract as much of this behaviour as another Derbyshire stone circle, the Nine Ladies.

[43] Burl blamed these changes on "New Age delusions of the power of imaginary fertility rites at the time of the Spring equinox".

[45] Financed by English Heritage,[46] a project was launched to restore Doll Tor to its previous appearance, bringing together professional archaeologists, students, and rangers from the Peak National Park service.

[1] In 1994 two small trenches were dug, designed to identify the stoneholes of the two western orthostats, allowing the latter to be re-erected in their original location.

[20] Although two of the orthostats had been lying prone since at least the mid-19th century, having fallen from their original standing position,[47] the restoration project decided to re-erect these.

[49] Claims on social media reported that other prehistoric sites around Britain had also been vandalised at this period, as the country was easing out of the first COVID-19 lockdown.