Three Things To Learn From 2024

Nobody will look back on the 2024 season with enthusiasm. Retrospectively, it was an extremely odd episode — though interesting, at least for us here at The Croppie — that highlighted the circles’ downward spiral of recent years. It reflected our own view from 2023 that we should abandon our expectations of the circles.

From autumn 2023 into spring 2024, the abnormally wet, mild weather set a concerning backdrop for anyone watching the landscape of southern England. We witnessed vast portions of oilseed rape and barley fields become semi-bare swamps as seeds were drowned or washed away. Fortunately, the majority of arable crops weren’t as badly affected though the unprecedented weather saw oilseed rape plants flower in mid-April, heightening expectations of an early crop circle that would never come to pass.

The silence lingered into mid-June and the barley, by which time even the press had contacted us, asking for views on why the fields were without circles. We ignored them, dubious of their motives. In an agonising slow motion the season played out from a primitive pictogram at Wilton Windmill in mid-June through to a more elaborate, two stage formation at Etchilhampton in August. In between, the only circles of note were at Marten and Stonehenge in Wiltshire, together with Stoke Charity in Hampshire. They were accompanied by two thoroughly ridiculous, poorly surveyed hoaxes adjacent to Stonehenge Visitors Centre and, in Dorset, Badbury Rings, both of which played out on social media in a pathetic flurry of self-aggrandisement by the perpetrators and their drone wielding lapdog.

It was a season that never got going, and one question dominated everything from start to finish: why was the 2024 season possibly the quietest ever recorded? We’re not in a position to publicly answer that, though we know it’s absolutely nothing to do with the most popular explanations we’ve read, namely the weather and the price of crops.

Instead, we find it much more interesting to see what we can take from the 2024 in the form of three observations. Each relates to how an unexpectedly still year has affected croppiedom.

Whilst heads were being scratched as to the late start in England, the first crop circle of the year slipped out into the public domain from the Strasbourg area of France. By British standards it was nothing to write home about, but it was a crop circle in a desolate landscape. One, to the best of our knowledge, which had no claimed author. As such, we had hoped it would have been greeted with some appreciation for what it was, but instead it became the subject of criticism and abuse for its less than pristine edges and surveying. We shared it on our Crop Circle Explorer account on Instagram, with one meathead suggesting we should only ‘post real ones’.

Such rapid dismissal of the French formation set us to thinking about what crop circles used to be and what they are now. As children and into our teenage years, the circles were mysterious objects in a field whose arrival went unannounced. They had no authors. Many formations were imperfect circles or rings with sometimes not-so-straight lines. These were creations that made people think about their origins, purpose and meanings. Back then there was no public internet, no social media. To see the circles, at least for those of us outside of Wiltshire and Hampshire, we either had to rely on the traditional media or getting lucky with a glimpse through the window of a moving vehicle.

The landscape is very different now. The question of meaning and purpose behind each crop circle has largely become lost in the noise of keys clicking to express opinion. All contemporary crop circles, at least in some quarters, are compared to their cousins from the swaggering heydays that spanned 1996 to 2010. We’ve spoken before that the legendary Chilbolton circles of 2001 and the Crabwood event of 2002 were, love them or loathe them, the peak of circle complexity. Since then, very little has been able to compete. (And let’s be straight up, even if you don’t want to hear it, the days of the big circle making teams are over. These days you’re lucky to hear of three or four people in a field on one night rather than ten or more.) So, by default, everything pales up against the showstoppers of that fifteen year period. Whilst many geometric crop circles still attract appreciation, those of a less complicated appearance tend to receive little more than unappreciative sniffs and scorn. The makers were drunk, they should practise before they go out into a field, have done this or that. As if the critics would produce better from their armchairs.

Such bile and misinformed critique aren’t what crop circles are about. They never have been and never will be. The circle making force doesn’t work on demand to meet the desires of anything but itself. It delivers what is able to at that moment in time, whether that is a lesson in complexity or a scruffy quintuplet. Indeed, those who have been around the block understand the inspiration and wow factor provided by the early circles, rings and pictograms. To reiterate, a crop circle was an unclaimed mystery and wonder that had no owner and appeared overnight in a field. In its purest form, that is what a crop circle was and still is. Yet many, possibly fuelled by the media representation of the ‘genuine’ circles as elaborate masterpieces, have lost sight of this. For them, crop circles have become entries in an art competition. An image on a screen to be judged on aesthetic value. The purpose, message or meaning of a circle is no longer something worthy of consideration. The circle has become an object of instant gratification. You click the thumb or the laughter emoji. You click the heart or just scroll on.

Think back to that small circle found at Nympsfield in Gloucestershire in 2023. It was of the old school type in a beautiful location opposite an ancient longbarrow known locally as Hetty Pegler’s Tump. Thought had gone into its location and to the best of our knowledge its creators are unknown. Whilst we don’t know who they are, we do know their work took a thorough beating and the (incorrect) names of suspects were thrown around online without care. Nothing seems to have been seen, or at least reported, from the Nympsfield circle makers in 2024. We’re not surprised in the slightest. Why would any circle maker, new or experienced, now look to the fields when they would have an easier life in bed at night? As we’ve noticed through Crop Circle Explorer, the first to moan at the supposed ineptitude of circle makers were often the first to complain about the stasis of 2024.

But it isn’t all bad news. For all we’ve just written about the throwaway commodification of the circles, there is a paradox to explore, albeit briefly. Croppies we have met on the ground, in and around circles, seem much more appreciative of them — though, sadly, this also includes the hoaxes (yes, we did notice how this included certain photographers and websites who should know better). ‘It’s a crop circle and there aren’t many of them anymore,’ said one croppie at Stoke Charity. We also found ourselves in similar discussions at Marten and Etchilhampton (‘We don’t know how much longer they will be here for and we need to take every opportunity to visit them.’). Even if this is the cerealogical end of days, there is still a demand for crop circles as social, spiritual and contemplative sites. Sadly, the people who take in crop circles in an experiential manner are vastly outnumbered by the online commentators. Perhaps, when all is said and done, it is the former category who are overlooked when they should be considered the most valuable. We are just as guilty.

The debacle surrounding the awful hoax opposite the Stonehenge Visitors Centre, and the subsequent mess at Badbury Rings, demonstrated that whilst loud mouthed hoaxers can make empty-headed noise, they can’t produce in the fields. And to think of what they had at their feet … the whole of southern England and more than two months to deliver the goods. Here was their big chance to show what they could do. Instead, they failed badly and produced two poorly surveyed disasters, the first of which resembled five unequally spaced poodle legs. The second was slightly better, and to think the master-brain-cell (‘mind’ is pushing it too far) of Team Neanderthal/Nine Watt, Deiniol ‘Dan’ Davies, criticised the Etchilhampton Hill formation in October with these words: ‘It lacks mathematical precision’. How can someone who can’t even divide a circle up into five equal sections pretend to speak with any authority?

If you’re struggling to visualise this, here’s the Stonehenge Visitors Centre hoax:

Photograph byKris Malford

And the beautiful formation at Etchilhampton:

Photograph by Hugh Newman

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it shows that those who shout the loudest often fail the hardest.

For as far back as we can remember, certain indivuduals have been shouting that circle makers work on behalf of those who produce calendars. We’ve lost count of the times we have seen the first formation of the season go down, only to be followed up by the cynical observation, ‘only eleven more to go before the calendar is complete!’

The 2024 season should put this nonsense away.

The circle makers don’t work for anyone but themselves. If they really were working in the pay of the likes of Lucy Pringle or the Alexanders we would have seen more crop circles than we did. Neither would we have seen the Alexanders photograph hoaxes they would have previously left well alone. 

To further press home the point, the 2025 calendars we’ve seen either feature multiple views of certain formations or some old classics to make up the numbers. When all is said and done, you can still make crop circle calendars regardless as to whether there is anything new in the fields or not.