One of around 1,300 recorded stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany, it was constructed as a part of a megalithic tradition that lasted from 3,300 to 900 BC, during what archaeologists categorise as the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Ages.

[3] To reach the site, the visitor must get to Crag Hall, where there are limited places for parking, and then walk along a rough track for 2¼ km (1¼ miles) uphill towards Swinside Farm, where the megalithic ring lies to the right of the path.

"[4] "After over a thousand years of early farming, a way of life based on ancestral tombs, forest clearance and settlement expansion came to an end.

Between 3500 and 3300 BC, prehistoric Britons ceased their continual expansion and cultivation of wilderness and instead focused on settling and farming the most agriculturally productive areas of the island: Orkney, eastern Scotland, Anglesey, the upper Thames, Wessex, Essex, Yorkshire and the river valleys of the Wash.[7] This period was also signalled by what archaeologists have interpreted as a change in religious beliefs across Britain.

Based on his study of those examples found at Orkney in northern Scotland, the archaeologist Colin Richards suggested that the stone and wooden circles built in Late Neolithic Britain might have represented the centre of the world, or axis mundi, for those who constructed them,[10] an idea adopted by fellow archaeologist Aaron Watson as a possibility in his discussion of why Late Neolithic peoples constructed the great ring at Avebury in southern England.

[3] Swinside's builders included a "well defined" entrance, 2.1 m (7 ft) wide, at the south-eastern side, which was signalled by the placing of two large portal stones outside the circumference of the circle.

The excavators reported finding a lump of charcoal and a piece of decayed bone as well as some modern coins in the turf layer.