West Overton, Wiltshire

June 23, 1999

An aerial shot by Steve Alexander ©1999

If there could be any doubts about the quality and importance of the 1999 season, this magnificent formation must have laid them to rest. This complex and precise diagram was formed in wheat just north of the A4. On the photograph, the ten large elements are clearly hexagons. What became clear only on field investigation was that the numerous small circles were also hexagonal.

As always with the circles any interpretation is possible. It seems clear that this is a diagrammatic Octahedron though the prevalence of hexagons is perhaps a distraction. The Octahedron (see diagram below) is a one of the five Platonic solids. It is made of eight equilateral triangles as is the formation. West Overton can be viewed as and or flattened Octahedron, the kind of thing that kids could cut out of cardboard and fold into a solid (see diagram below).

Another way of looking at the Octahedron is as two pyramids stuck base-to-base. The square base forms an equator of the solid and this equator recurs three times. The Octahedron is often called the sister of the cube and it is interesting that these triangle-based surfaces generate so much squareness.










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