Cup-and-Ring Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NX 529 528
Also Known as:
Bardriston
Archaeology & History
In a region possessed with a good number of cup and ring stones, this one on the lower slopes of Barholm Hill may have once been part of a prehistoric tomb, or cist cover. A fairly decent design had been carved onto a small flat slab of stone which, when uncovered in the 19th century, doesn’t seem to have been in its original position. As the great Fred Coles (1894) told us:
Coles’ 1895 sketch
“The Bardristan slab…was removed from amongst the stones of an old drain in 1889, and, through Mr Kinna’s care, it is now preserved at Bardristan. The evident attempt to square the stone itself; the extreme smallness of the rings ; the direct connection of the grooves, in all cases but one, with cups; and lastly, the vivid sharpness of the whole sculpturing, in which the tool-work is clear much beyond the ordinary, all combine to render this Bardristan slab unusually interesting and valuable.”
Less than twenty years after Coles’ description, the Royal Commission (1914) lads visited the site hoping to make their own assessment, but the carving had already been lost. Referring to Coles’ account, they told how,
“inquiry there failed to elicit information concerning it, and it appears to have been lost. Mr Coles’ illustration…shows in the general intercommunication of the various cups a feature which characterises the stone at Kirkclaugh, about ¼ mile to the south of Bardriston.”
In the subsequent commentaries on this carving by Ron Morris (1967; 1979) and A.E. Truckell (1961), its whereabouts remained a mystery and, to this day, we know not what became of it…
Morris, Ronald W.B., “The Cup-and-Ring Marks and Similar Sculptures of South-West Scotland,” in Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, volume 14, 1967.
Morris, Ronald W.B., The Prehistoric Rock Art of Galloway and the Isle of Man, Blandford: Poole 1979.
Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments & Constructions of Scotland, Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in Galloway – volume 2: County of the Stewatry of Kirkcudbrightshire , HMSO: Edinburgh 1914.
Truckell, A.E., “Cup-and-Ring-Marked Slabs in the Cairnholy and Auchinlarie Area,” in Transactions of Galloway & Dumfriesshire Natural History & Antiquarian Society, volume 40, 1961.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
