Wessex Water will present £200 to the creator of the Box Rocks Circus on Thursday, to preserve the geological monument’s long-term future.

The site was the brainchild of Elizabeth Devon from Keele University’s Earth Science Education Unit, who will be presented with the Watermark award at the circus.

Now in its twentieth year, the award has supported over 800 environmental initiatives. Organised by The Conservation Foundation, all projects are judged by a panel chaired by its president, environmental campaigner David Bellamy.

The circus was completed in 2012 and aims to help schoolchildren and the wider public understand the geology of Britain.

Ms Devon said: “The large rocks tell the story of the movement of the British Isles from south of the equator to where the Mediterranean is today. When children get their hands on these rocks, it helps their imagination take those gigantic leaps into times past.

“Numbers in their millions and billions are impressive but hard to identify with. When children handle a piece of rock that has been around for 425 million years, clamber over it even - that is something solid. Box Rock Circus turns abstract figures into something that young minds can connect with.

“I hope Rock Circus will fire their imaginations to the dynamic nature of the Earth and her science of geology.”