Standing Stone (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NS 855 507
Archaeology & History
![](https://www.thenorthernantiquarian.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Standing-Stone-Well-Carluke-1860-180x99.jpg)
An ancient standing stone on the eastern side of Carluke isn’t something that most local people are aware of. Sadly it’s long gone, but we find what seems to be a reference to it, both in the place-name Stanistone Road and the adjacent Standing Stone Well. The monolith would seem to have stood immediately east of the well, as a description of it by Rev John Wylie (1845) in the New Statistical Account (1845) indicates. Wylie told us that:
“Till lately, one of those remarkable monuments of antiquity, called standing stones, stood at Cairney Mount; but the hope of finding a hidden treasure induced some rude hand to destroy it.”
Cairney Mount is a field-name 300 metres east of the well, so it would seem highly likely there was an association between them, and the stone obviously stood somewhere between these two points.
References:
- Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Lanarkshire: An Inventory of the Prehistoric and Roman Monuments, HMSO: Edinburgh 1978.
- Wylie, John, “Parish of Carluke,” in New Statistical Account of Scotland – volume 6: Lanarkshire, William Blackwood: Edinburgh 1845.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian