Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – NN 65736 07989
Less than a mile east of Callander on the main A84 road, nearly 300 yards just past the entrance into the Keltie Bridge caravan park, take the tiny road on your left (north) and barely 100 yards along where a small crossroads can be said to exist, go straight forward up the tiny single-track road ahead of you. Literally 0.62 miles, or 1km up, park on the right-side of the road where a small grassy track runs up the slope. From here, you need to keep walking up the road itself, bearing right just past the small bridge and, about 350 yards along you’ll see a notable rise in the field on your right less than 100 yards in. Head straight for it!
Archaeology & History
Despite this being a very basic simplistic design, I’m somewhat disappointed in myself as (for once!) I didn’t indulge myself in the soaking muddy ground and peel back the dung-infested turf to see the entire surface of this stone and, as a result, didn’t see the carving in its entirety. I’d have got soaked and been covered in shit, but that’s my usual course of action anyhow. But this time we were visiting an antique centre and book-dealer straight afterwards, so for once I couldn’t play in the mud. Damn those neat and tidy folk!
It’s nowt special to look at in all honesty, but it’s in a good state of preservation as it was seemingly uncovered in pretty recent times beneath the curious large mass of loose stones right next to it. The stone mass gives the impression of it being a ruined cairn, but seems more likely to be a clearance cairn that was piled up, quite fortuitously, next to the cup-marked rock.
The carving consists of eight cup-marks (not all shown in these photos): five large and prominent, one not so prominent, and two that are small and very shallow. The more distinct cups would seem to have been worked and re-worked many times, obviously possessing a practical nature of some sort. As we can see in the photos, four of the larger cups stand out, whilst the small ones can be difficult to see. I need to go back here sometime and clear the rest of the stone to see if there are more cup-marks underneath the soil. Check it out for yourself when you’re looking at the nearby cairns at Ballachraggan and beyond.
References:
- Main, Lorna & Page, R., “Easter Brackland, Stirling,” in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, volume 2, 2001.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
