The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald opted to think big to mark the launch of its new compact edition – about 300ft big.

Wiltshire is famed for its crop circles so the paper decided to enlist the help of a circle maker to come up with a design for the Gazette.

The result was a spectacular circle with the paper’s G&H initials in the middle, tramped into a field of rape at Baltic Farm, near Avebury by expert Matthew Williams, with the co-operation of farmer David Sheppard.

Reporter Lucy Whitfield and partner Nick also helped as the team set to work at dusk last Friday and toiled through the night until 5am the next morning. The work kicked off as the almost-full moon rose.

Matthew first established that a deep enough inroad had been made into the field to accommodate a 300ft circle, then created a scribe line for the team to follow.

The team flattened the outer rim of the circle, then those of the inner circles, and then the vast shaded space at the top.

Matthew said it was a regular circle-making expedition.

He said: “We got rained on heavily a couple of times but we finished while it was still dark.

“No one likes working in rape, which is why we had to make the circle so big, to get the right level of definition.”

The circle was the first to appear in Wiltshire this year.

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