Category: Scotland

Stone Circle:  OS Grid Reference – NN 92518 55740

Also Known as:

1. Clachan iobairt
2. Fonab Moor
3. Four Stones (Wilson)

Getting Here

From Pitlochry town centre, walk down the A924 high street as if you’re going to the Blair Atholl Distillery, but just before it take the right-turn and go over the river, and just keeping walking along this road for a third-of-a-mile (0.5km) until your reach a small small on your left that swerves up the hill (there’s a little signpost here saying Cluny Path to Strathtay).  Go up and across the main road, then just keeping walking up the dirt-track, which becomes a footpath, and heads further uphill into and through the woodland.  Make a bittova daydream from the walk up here, making sure to keep to the path closest to the burn (stream) on your left.  Eventually when it levels out, you’re very close.  Just keep on the same track and, where it meets up with another, bear left and about 100 yards along, on a small rise in the trees on your right, you’ll see these old stones peeking out.  Keep your wits about you!

Archaeology & History

Sat high up on open moorlands with views all round… is what this site used to look like.  Sadly, the forestry commission have almost completely enclosed this prehistoric site, making any view of the surrounding landscape all but impossible.  I’m not the first and won’t be the last person to be pissed-off by such thoughtlessness.  Alexander Thom made mention of it too.  After making an initial assessment of the astronomical alignments at these stones in 1967, “when we returned to measure the horizon we found that trees had been planted round the stones and so we failed.” (Thom 1990)  Not good.

On my first visit here, as I entered this “stone circle” my first impression was that it wasn’t a circle at all, but the remnants of a megalithic stone row!  Thom thought the same.  It’s the slender thin stature of the stones that do it to you: they almost cut the air and point the enquiring nose dead straight along the same angle that all the stones have been deliberately aligned to.  I assume they’ve had a similar effect on other people over the years.

The Clachan an Diridh, or the Stones on the Ascent, were first mentioned in Dan Wilson’s (1851) major survey and who was so impressed by the view from here and its setting in the landscape that he compared its visage to Stonehenge.  Were it not for the short-sightedness of the Forestry Commission destroying the view, most would no doubt agree with Wilson’s sentiments.  From these olde stones, he told:

“One of the great level Highland moors stretches away beneath the eye, like a dark waveless lake, contrasting with the distant heights, among which Ben Lawers rears its pyramidal summit to an elevation of upwards of 4000 feet above the level of the sea.  Amid this wild Highland landscape the huge standing stones, grey with the moss of ages, produce a singularly grand and imposing effect; and from the idea of lofty height which the distant mountains suggest, they convey a stronger impression of gigantic proportions than is produced even by the first sight of the giant monoliths of Salisbury Plain.”

The giant figure of Ben Lawers, if we could see it today, would rise to the southwest 20 miles (32km) from here; and the great pyramidal fairy mountain of Schiehallion would be equinox west, 13 miles (21km) away.  Yet curiously when Alexander Thom surveyed the outlying hills, he didn’t think either of these mountains had any worth, astronomically speaking that is.  Yet Lawers in particular would be the largest point on the southwestern horizon, rising in the distance, way beyond the wide rolling U-shaped glen of Strathtay to where the landscape changes into more rugged dynamic uplands.  And the importance of Lawers as a place in prehistory is shown by the mass of petroglyphs across its slopes—particularly the side you could see from Clachan an Diridh.

Instead, Thom (1967) looked much further to the southwest—south-southwest in fact—where he initially thought that there was an alignment to the major southern moonset ten miles away above the rugged hill of Meall Dubh, framed on either side by the mountain peaks of Meall nam Fuaran and Beinn na Gainimh.  Aubrey Burl (1988) told how Thom later discounted this alignment and instead turned his attention a full 180° where a large stone on the hillside to the north-northeast caught his theodolytic eye.  This marked an alignment towards the peak of Ben Vrackie:

“There is little doubt,” he wrote, “that this is a lunar site showing perhaps…at the major standstill.  Could one side of the southern 6ft high stone possibly have indicated the setting point of the Moon at minor standstill?” (Thom 1990)

Thom looked at these stones and the landscape with the mind of an astronomer, whereas I’m more in preference of the aborigine who sees the feel of the landscape to discern relationships and meanings.  Sometimes, of course, the sky and the landscape come together and that universal mythic union of heaven and Earth finds importance at a site.  I have little doubt that such a mythos was once known here, on the moorland plateau, under the clear stars with the darkness reaching to speak with Lawers and other bones of landscape in the solid darkness of mountain silhouettes and fading horizons.  Many a sleep at this site would have touched minds with Wonder…

Anyway, all that aside…

These megaliths have been classified as one of Aubrey Burl’s “four posters”, i.e., a rough square of four megalithic uprights, in spite of there only being three standing stones here.  Even when Dan Wilson (1851) wrote about the place there were just three of them.  However, down the slope from the stones, just off the recent trackside, there’s a decent contender for the fourth stone lying on its side in the undergrowth, half-covered in moss.  It’s certainly fallen or rolled down the slope and its size and shape suggest that it may once have stood upright.  Have a thoughtful fondle of it while you’re here.

The ‘circle’ was highlighted on the 1899 OS-map and, a few years later, was visited and surveyed by the great Fred Coles (1908) and like Dan Wilson before him, told the view from here to be “very grand.”  He continued:

“In local parlance this group is known as the Four Stones.  This must be a fairly old name handed down through some generations; because, for at least fifty-seven years past, only three Standing Stones have remained in situ.  These three Stones are arranged as shown in the plan…in a group forming in its now imperfect condition a triangle which, measured from the centres of the Stones, has its SE side 11 feet 6 inches long; its SW side 12 feet 3 inches ; and its north side 16 feet 3 inches.  Fragments of the demolished fourth Stone lie about the ground; but there is no clear indication of its original position. The South Stone, A, is 3 feet 7 inches in breadth, 5 feet 10 inches in height, and from 12 to 4 inches in thickness.  The West Stone, B, 6 feet in height, measures 5 feet at the back, and 4 feet 10 inches at the front, and is 18 inches in thickness.  The East Stone, C, at its outer angle is 3 feet 3 inches above ground, and leans inward. All the blocks are of quartziferous gritty sandstone, the East Stone being particularly rough and fissured.  A large fragment lying near it seems to be a portion of it.   The Stones are set upon a fairly true Circle with a diameter of 15 feet 4 inches.  One feature quickly arrests notice: this is, that the broader faces of these Stones are not set even approximately upon and in line with the circumference, but nearly parallel with each other—an arrangement quite unlike the setting of Stones in the many other Circles hitherto surveyed.”

When Burl (1988) added this site to his Four Posters survey he merely echoed Coles’ early description, adding that, in his view, the standing stones that we see today were probably, originally, “set out on the circumference of a circle 20ft (6.1m) in diameter.”

I think it’s likely that there would have been more prehistoric sites in the vicinity, but a notable oddity is the almost complete absence of other recorded sites anywhere nearby.  Of course, if there was anything, those thoughtful Forestry Commission heads would have destroyed it.  We are left, simply, with the old but reliable notes of Messrs Dixon (1923) and Mitchell (1925) who told that, in their days, other remains did exist nearby in the form of ancient cairns and hut circles—‘Pictish’ according to tradition.  If we’re lucky, some damaged parts of them might still be found at the edges, a short distance to the north west…

Folklore

In Hugh MacMillan’s (1901) gorgeous literary sojourn along Strathtay, he strayed somewhat from his otherwise historical notices by telling that here,

“on the highest part of the moorland…is a group of ‘clachan iobairt’, or stones of worship, where the Druids of old performed their mysterious rites, going round the circle of standing stones from east to west with the sun, or the ‘car deasal’, the lucky side, when they wished to invoke a blessing upon their friends, and going round the circle in the opposite direction, from west to east, the ‘car tuathsel’, or unlucky side, when they wished to pronounce a curse upon their foes.”

Whether this was what Hugh Mitchell (1923) meant when he referred to the traditions surrounding Clachan an Dirirdh we don’t know, but he echoed MacMillan’s account (though made no reference of his words), also adding that it was a site that “was visited on the first of May” or Beltane by some local people….

References:

1. Burl, Aubrey, Four Posters: Bronze Age Stone Circles of Western Europe, BAR 195: Oxford 1988.
2. Burl, Aubrey, A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, New Haven & London 1995.
3. Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
4. Coles, Fred, “Report on Stone Circles Surveyed in Perthshire – North Eastern Section,” in Proceedings Society Antiquaries Scotland, volume 42, 1908.
5. Dixon, John H., Pitlochry, Past and Present, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1925.
6. Kennedy, James, Folklore and Reminiscences of Strathtay and Grandtully, Munro Press: Perth 1927.
7. Liddell, Colin, Pitlochry – Heritage of a Highland District, PKDL: Perth 1993.
8. MacMillan, Hugh, The Highland Tay: From its Source to Dunkeld, H. Virtue: London 1901.
9. Mitchell, Hugh, Pitlochry District: Its Topography, Archaeology and History, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1923.
10. Omand, Donald (ed.), The Perthshire Book, Birlinn: Edinburgh 1999.
11. Stevenson, J., “Prehistory,” in Omand’s The Perthshire Book, Edinburgh 1999.
12. Thom, Alexander, Megalithic Sites in Britain, Oxford University Press 1967.
13. Thom, Alexander, Megalithic Lunar Observatories, Oxford University Press 1971.
14. Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, H.A.W., Megalithic Rings, BAR: Oxford 1980.
15. Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, Aubrey, Stone Rows and Standing Stones – volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1990.
16. Wilson, Daniel, The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Sutherland & Knox: Edinburgh 1851.

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.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian