It 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.

In 1877, William Greenwell and Llewellynn Jewitt excavated at the site, and in the late 1930s the Derbyshire Archaeological Society set two of the orthostats standing again.

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causewayed enclosures, and cursuses that had predominated in the Early Neolithic were no longer built, and had been replaced by circular monuments of various kinds.

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

[16] The archaeologists Graeme Guilbert, Daryl Garton, and David Walters described these as an "imposing group,"[17] while Burl characterised the monument as an "impressive site".

[15] From the stone circle, at midsummer the major southern moon can be seen setting between the two boulders of the nearby Robin Hood's Stride.

[21] A sandstone boulder lying 130m to the north/northeast of Nine Stones Close contains a row of three carved cup marks, one of which is partially enclosed by a ring.

[24] The antiquarian Hayman Rooke noted the existence of Nine Stones Close, which he called a "Druid temple," in a 1782 article about the heritage of Stanton and Harthill Moors published in the journal Archaeologia.

[25] The idea that Britain's prehistoric monuments had been built by the druids, ritual specialists present in parts of Iron Age Western Europe, was one that had attracted broad support among antiquarians over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, having been adopted by influential writers such as John Aubrey and William Stukeley.

[26] This idea was repeated by the antiquarian Thomas Bateman in his 1848 book Vestiges of the Antiquities of Derbyshire, where he referred to "Nine-stone Close" as a "small druidical cirque.

"[27] Bateman observed seven stones in the circle and a slight elevation in the centre, "so as to appear as a low tumulus", suggesting the possibility that this had once been used for burials.

[27] In 1847, Bateman had dug at the site, discovering "several fragments of imperfectly baked pottery accompanied by flint both in a natural and calcinated state.

[2] In 1947, Heathcote suggested that this was not an example of folklore emerging from within the oral culture of the local community, but rather had been invented by "early guidebook writers".

[34] It is uncertain whether there were originally nine stones, one theory being that nine is a corruption of 'noon', said to be the time when, according to local folklore, fairies would gather at the site to dance.