The Rempstone ring 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 Age, over a period between 3,300 and 900 BC.

The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that they were likely religious sites, with the stones perhaps having supernatural associations for those who built the circles.

[3] The land on which the site sits is privately owned,[1] and is accorded legal protection under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.

[5] By 3000 BC, the long barrows, causewayed enclosures, and cursuses which had predominated in the Early Neolithic had ceased being built, and were instead replaced by circular monuments of various kinds.

[8] These stone circles typically show very little evidence of human visitation during the period immediately following their creation.

[10] The archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson suggested that in Neolithic Britain, stone was associated with the dead and wood with the living.

[10] The area of modern Dorset has only a "thin scatter" of stone circles,[12] with nine possible examples known within its boundaries.

[15] The Dorset circles have a simplistic typology, being of comparatively small size, with none exceeding 28 metres (92 feet) in diameter.

[22] It is also possible that the stone circles were linked to a number of earthen henges erected in Dorset around the same period.

[26] The southern half of the circle has been destroyed,[3] likely by clay workings that took place in the area during the late eighteenth century.

[27] The surviving stones form an arc that suggests that the circle originally had a diameter of about 26 metres,[23] or 80 feet.

[32] According to this story, the circle's stones had landed in their location after having been hurled at Corfe Castle by the Devil.