Nine Stones Close

Nine Stones Close, also known as the Grey Ladies, is a stone circle on Harthill Moor in Derbyshire in the English East Midlands. 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. The purpose of the monument is unknown.

The Nine Stones Close originally measured 13.7 metres in diameter. In the mid-19th century it had seven stones in its ring, although by the early 21st century that number had declined to four. There are two carved cup marks, a form of rock art, evident on one of the remaining stones.There may have previously been at earthen tumulus inside the ring, suggested by a slight elevation observed in the mid-19th century. It is possible that the ring was deliberately positioned to allow sightlines to the nearby Robin Hood's Stride, a gritstone crag, and that a nearby sandstone boulder decorated with cup markings also had reference to the circle.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Nine Ladies attracted the attention of antiquarians like Hayman Rooke and Thomas Bateman. In 1877 the antiquarians William Greenwell and Llewellynn Jewitt excavated at the site, while in the late 1930s the Derbyshire Archaeological Society set two of the orthostats standing again.