cup marked stones

Glenballoch, Blairgowrie, Perthshire

23/06/202230/09/2025 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NO 186 480

Archaeology & History

When J. Romilly Allen (1881) wrote about the megaliths and petroglyphs of Glenballoch, the owner of the property—a Mr George Harris—informed him of other archaeological finds in the locale: one of which was a cup-marked stone with distinct linear elements, whose description reminded me, slightly, of Ilkley’s Idol Stone. It was found a short distance east of the Glenballoch (or Craighall Mill) stone circle. Allen told how,

“Mr Harris…informed me that about twenty years ago he had dug up a stone with cup-markings upon it, on the opposite side of the valley to the south-east of the Glenballoch stone. The stone lay horizontally with the cups uppermost. It was split up and is now built into the out buildings of Glenballoch Farm. The two largest fragments form the cover and sill of the hole through which the shaft of the threshing machine passes through the wall of the horse-mill, into the house. A third fragment is built in above the window at the opposite side of the house, and is of greenish hue. Mr Harris expressed his great regret at not having known the value of this stone when he broke it up, and he is evidently proud of the stone which remains, and is determined that no ill shall befall it as long as he remains its guardian. The cup marks on the stone which was broken appear to have been arranged symmetrically in two rows, and Mr Harris affirms distinctly that they were alternately circular and rectangular.”

These three stone fragments have not been seen since. They may still be covered over in the spot Mr Harris described, but no one seems to have found them. In the event that someone manages to find them, see if you can get a few good photos and stick ’em on our Facebook group.

References:

Allen, J. Romilly, “Notice of Three Cup-Marked Stones, and the Discovery of an Urn, in Perthshire,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, volume 15, 1881.
Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, North-East Perth: An Archaeological Landscape, HMSO: Edinburgh 1990.

Deer Track Stone, Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

16/06/202016/06/2020 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 13858 45562

Also Known as:

Carving no.190 (Hedges)
Carving no.367 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Carving with Woofa Bank enclosure to rear

Getting Here

The easiest way to find this is to take the same directions to reach the Woofa Bank settlement. Get your compass out and make sure that you’re at the northern edge of the settlement walling. From here, walk about 60 yards northwest and keep your eyes peeled for a rock about 2 feet high, curved and elongated with its top surface above the heather. You’ll find it.

Archaeology & History

The name I’ve given to this stone is a conjectural one based entirely on comparative petroglyph designs elsewhere in the world. Or to put it more simply: elsewhere in the world we find examples of prehistoric rock art showing animal tracks and rituals relating to hunting animals, and in the design of this petroglyph on Ilkley Moor I wondered if we might be looking at something similar. Internationally respected anthropologists, archaeologists, geologists and rock art specialists such as Lawrence Loendorf (2008), Polly Schaafsma (1980), Dennis Slifer (1998) and many others show examples of animal tracks in the US and Mexico (examples exist throughout the world), and it’s not unlikely that some of the petroglyphs in the UK represent such things. But, like I say, this particular carving may have nowt to do with such a thing and the idea is entirely conjectural on my part and is probably way off the mark.

Located less than 60 yards (54m) northwest of the impressive Woof Bank enclosure, it’s possible that the first literary note of this was by Stuart Feather (1968) when he made note of five cup-and-ring marked rocks (which) have been revealed by erosion in 1968,” telling us that some of the motifs on the rocks included cups with and without rings, channels and eye-shaped marks (occuli)— the latter of which may relate to this stone.

A more definite description of the stone was made in John Hedges (1986) survey where he described it in that usual simplistic form, telling us: “Long rock, its surface on two levels, sloping N to S in heather. Two large oval cups and one cup at N end. One clear cup at S end.”

It is these two elongated cups that have the distinct appearance of deer tracks. (another animal with a similar footprint is the goat) The cup-mark in front of them and the one at the back of the rock may be something relative to the animal. But more important than this is to recognise that, in lots of cultures, animal tracks are represented in some petroglyphs. That’s more important to think about when you look at British rock art, than the improbability of this design being such a thing…

References:

Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
Feather, Stuart, “West Yorkshire Archaeological Register – Ilkley (WR) Green Crag Slack,” in Yorkshire Archaeology Journal, volume 42, 1968.
Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
Loendorf, Lawrence L., Thunder and Herds – Rock Art of the High Plains, Left Coast: Walnut Creek 2008.
Schaafsma, Polly, Indian Rock Art of the Southwest, University of New Mexico Press 1980.
Slifer, Dennis, Signs of Life – Rock Art of the Upper Rio Grande, Ancient City: New Mexico 1998.

Montalt, Dunning, Perthshire

08/08/201908/08/2019 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – NO 06 13

Also Known as:

Canmore ID 26675
Mount Alt Farm

Archaeology & History

Montalt’s curious cup-marked stone

This is a curious stone and may not be the type of ‘cup-marked’ rock we’re used to. Maybe… It is presently housed in Stirling’s Smith Art Gallery & Museum, where a small note tells that is was originally found “on the top of the Ochils, near Mount Alt Farm, Path of Condie in 1893.” The stone was found at the same time, and adjacent to, a prehistoric collared urn—which implies it had an association with a cairn or cist, or burial site of some sort (which isn’t uncommon). However, the exact location of its original whereabouts has been forgotten.

Broken off from a larger piece of stone, the remaining piece of rock has six cup-markings cut into it, between one and three inches across. The smallest cup is what we might call a ‘normal’ size, but the rest of them get increasingly large and may have been more functional than purely mythic in nature. In a small note attached to the stone in the Museum, they add the interesting note that,

“There are…indications that in some places they may be related to transhumance: the practice of moving sheep, cattle and goats to higher pastures in the summer, where they may have been used to mark routes or sources of water.”

They may indeed – amongst a variety of other things too. But the suggested relationship with cattle occurs in stones found near Haworth, West Yorkshire, where large man-affected carved ‘cups’ such as the ones here, were known to be filled with milk at specific times of Nature’s calendrical rhythms, for the spirits of the place to give good fortune to the farmer and local people. We know of one instance where this practice still occurs and goes back generations in the same family. Examples of this animistic practice have also been found in the Scottish Highlands.

Cochno (05), Duntocher, Dumbartonshire

23/11/201813/12/2025 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – NS 50301 73655

Also Known as:

Auchnacraig
Canmore ID 44536

Getting Here

Along the A810 Bearsden to Dunochter road, 100 yards past the Faifley roundabout, turn right up Cochno Road. Go up for literally 1 mile and hit the car-park. Go back onto the road and walk uphill. Barely 50 yards up, turn right and walk down the track. About 350 yards along its bendy route, some grasslands appear on your right and there, about 40 yards away, is the large Cochno-5 carving.

Archaeology & History

First described by James Harvey (1889) in association with adjacent carvings, he told that “there are eight isolated cups, two of which have a diameter of 2½ inches” on this stone. Harvey was one of those who loved the idea that our ancestors were etching cup-marks as receptacles for collecting blood and similar christian fantasies. It was a bittova fad at the time.

As we can see, the kids have sprayed their own ID onto the stone. It’s highly unlikely that they were even aware of this being a prehistoric site as there’s nothing to indicate it as such, and I know of archaeologists who wouldn’t have even seen the cup-marks on the stone, so we can’t really apportion blame. (We must recall that businessman Tom Lonsdale and Ilkley Council branded such things as “twenty-first century informal unauthorised carvings” when they sought and succeeded to get large amounts of cash to justify their own ‘brand’ of vandalism and called it ‘art’. Very common amongst those social types.)

References:

Harvey, James, “Notes on Some Undescribed Cup-Marked Rocks at Duntocher, Dumbartonshire”, in Proceedings Society Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 23, 1889.

Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to the awesome Aisha Domleo and her little dynamic duo for helping us get to this site.

Lochay Woods, Killin, Perthshire

03/12/201714/03/2024 megalithix

Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference – NN 54125 35388

Also Known as:

Canmore ID 274203

Getting Here

Going out of Killin towards Kenmore on the A827 road, immediately past the Bridge of Lochay Hotel, turn left. Go down here for just over 2 miles and park-up where a small track turns up to the right, close to the riverside and opposite a flat green piece of land—right by The Green cup-marked rock-face. Walk up the small bendy track for about ⅔-mile (1km) and eventually, high above the tree-line, the road splits. Right here, go through the gate and walk downhill, over the boggy land, cross the burn, then the overgrown wall, and a second overgrown wall. Very close hereby is a small rise in the land amidst the mass of bracken, upon which is the stone in question!

Archaeology & History

This large long, undulating, quartz-rich stretch of rock has two main petroglyphic sections to it, with curious visual sections of natural geological forms accompanying the cup-markings, found either side of the stone on its north and south sides. Its northern face has at least 20 cup-marks, of differing sizes, measuring between one and two inches across and up to half-an-inch deep. Their visual nature is markedly different to those on the more southern side of the stone, where they are generally smaller and much more shallow, perhaps meaning they were carved much earlier than their northern counterparts. One of the cups on this section has a very faint incomplete ring around it.

Running near the middle of the rock is a large long line of quartz and a deep cleft in which I found a curious worked piece of quartz shaped like a large spear-head, and another that looks like it’s been deliberately smoothed all round the edges. Both these pieces fit nicely in my hand. All around the edges of the stone, many tiny pieces of quartz were scattered, as if they had been struck onto the stone—either to try carving the cups (damn problematic!), or for some visual/magickal reason.

Cow Keeper’s Field (2), Boulby, Easington, North Yorkshire

03/10/201713/12/2025 megalithix

Cup-and-Line Stone: OS Grid Reference – NZ 75402 19222

Also Known as:

BOU-5 (Brown & Chappell)

Archaeology & History

Inside the once prominent prehistoric tumulus on the Cow Keeper’s Field (now destroyed), the northern antiquarians William Hornsby and John Laverick (1920) came across two small portable petroglyphs: the Cow Keeper’s Field 1 carving, plus this “peculiarly marked stone” as they put it, some “5ft south of the centre” where a cist, or stone-lined burial existed. Measuring 18in by 7in, the rock carving consists of at least one large cup-marking which is clearly evident on top of the stone, plus what seems to be another one next to it, half-covered. Along the side of the stone, a series of twelve roughly parallel lines have been carved out, running down to the bottom of the stone. Rock art researcher and writer Graeme Chappell (2017) tells us the carving is supposed to be “in storage in the Dorman museum in Middlesborough,” although no one has seen it in years. It would be worthwhile if fellow research students could visit the said museum to recover this and other portable cup-marked stones that were found in the area.

References:

Brown, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors, Tempus: Stroud 2005.
Chappell, Graeme, Personal communication, October 4, 2017.
Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1990.
Elgee, Frank, Early Man in North-East Yorkshire, John Bellows: Gloucester 1930.
Hornsby, William & Laverick, John D., “British Barrows round Boulby,” in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, volume 25, 1920.

Over Glenny (05), Port of Menteith, Stirlingshire

16/09/201706/09/2025 megalithix

Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference — NN 56991 02834

Getting Here

Along the A81 road from Port of Menteith to Aberfoyle, watch out for the small road in the trees running at an angle sharply uphill, nearly opposite Portend, up to Coldon and higher. Keep going, bearing right past Mondowie and stopping at the dirt-track 100 yards or so further up on the left. Walk up this dirt-track for ⅔ mile, and just before reaching the planted forestry, turn right along another dirt-track. Less than 200 yards along there’s a large sycamore tree, and about 20 yards below it (south) are several open flat rock surfaces. This is the most westerly of them.

Archaeology & History

On this small smooth rock surface we find an almost archetypal cup-and-ring stone, whose design consists of a double cup-and-ring and a faint cup-and-ring. The double-ring has several seemingly natural small fissures in the rock running at various angles into the central cup from the outside; and there are two faint ones running from the double-rings outwards to the cup-mark in the single-ring, framing the central cupmark in the middle. It may have been that these scratches on the rock gave rise to the position of the cupmark in this petroglyph. It’s difficult to see whether or not the single cup-and-ring was ever completed.

Canmore’s description of this petroglyph tells simply: “The larger of the two is 180mm in diameter and has two rings around a cup that is 70mm in diameter and 15mm deep. The smaller has one ring around a cup.”

Once you’ve seen this, have a look at the Over Glenny (6) carving, about 10 yards east of here.

References:

Brouwer, Jan & van Veen, Gus, Rock Art in the Menteith Hills, BRAC 2009.
Sorowka, P., Davenport, C., & Fairclough, J., “Stirling, Over Glenny,” in Discovery & Excavation, Scotland, vol. 15, 2014.

Acknowledgements: Massive thanks to Paul Hornby, Lisa Samson & Fraser Harrick for all their help on the day of this visit.

Over Glenny (06), Port of Menteith, Stirlingshire

06/09/201725/07/2025 megalithix

Cup-and-Ring Stone: OS Grid Reference — NN 56993 02835

Getting Here

Along the A81 road from Port of Menteith to Aberfoyle, watch out for the small road in the trees running at an angle sharply uphill, nearly opposite Portend, up to Coldon and higher. Keep going, bearing right past Mondowie and stopping at the dirt-track 100 yards or so further up on the left (and ignore the english fuckers up here who might say “you’re not allowed to park here”, as Scottish government regulation allows you to do so unless you block the road). Walk up this dirt-track for ⅔ mile, and just before reaching the planted forestry, turn right along another dirt-track. Less than 200 yards along there’s a large sycamore tree, and about 20 yards below it (south) is the carving you’re looking for.

Archaeology & History

It’s difficult keeping up with the carvings in this region to the north of the Lake of Menteith, as we find new unrecorded ones on every visit, maintaining the tradition of fellow rock art students Maarten van Hoek, Kaledon Naddair, George Currie, Jan Broewer and the rest—and we know that there’s more of them hidden away. This one doesn’t seem to be in the Canmore listings, but I put that down to the fact that they’ve got a grid-reference wrong somewhere, as it’s pretty plain to see. Although, to be honest, in the rather vague descriptions of other adjacent carvings (Over Glenny 5 and 7), this carving is in-between them, so you’d expect it to be listed. Anyway, that aside…

This long flat exposed rock surface has two primary cup-and-rings upon it: one cup with a double-ring, and the other standard cup-and-ring; there are also two single cup-markings on the stone: one near the middle of the rock and the other on its lower-right side. The main element is the double-cup-and-ring, which appears to be incomplete—not only in terms of its design, but also, as you can see in the photos, seems unfinished. From the central double-ring, a faint carved line runs out from the centre and into the other faint, incomplete, single cup-and-ring.

At the bottom of the stone (as with several others hereby) a curious set of deep scars have been cut into the edge of the rock. They’re unmistakable when you see them. They have probably been created by metal artifacts being sharpened along the bottom of the rock—many many times by the look of it. These deep cuts reminded me of the more famous Polisher Stone, down Avebury-way. They may be explained by the fact that, several centuries ago, a battle occurred here and some of the men gathered in the area before the attack. It would seem as if this and the other cup-and-ring stones were used to sharpen their blades before going into battle. Whether this was done because of some local lore which imbued these stones with some sort of magick, we do not know. Folklore here seems curiously scarce (english incomers destroyed local traditions, as writers were telling us in the 19th century), apart from the well-known one of the area being rife with fairies: Robert Kirk’s famous The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Faeries (1691) was written three miles west of here, at Aberfoyle.

References:

Brouwer, Jan & van Veen, Gus, Rock Art in the Menteith Hills, BRAC 2009.

Acknowledgements: Massive thanks to the rest of the crew: Paul Hornby, Lisa Samson & Fraser Harrick.

Cock Lakes, Blubberhouses Moor, North Yorkshire

02/05/201725/09/2019 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 1524 5469

Getting Here

Follow the same directions as if you’re visiting the James Stone monolith. From here, walk about 60 yards southeast and zigzag about in the heather until you find a small squarish-shaped earthfast rock, barely 6 inches above ground-level (might be hard to find when the heather’s fully grown). If you’ve got a petroglyphic nose, you’ll find it!

Archaeology & History

A simple faded cup-marked stone, roughly 2½ feet by 2 feet across, can be found about 65 feet southeast of the James Stone and 40 yards west of the Benty Gate prehistoric enclosure. Sadly when we visited the place a few days ago, the sky was grey and the conditions for good photos were poor.

At least five cup-marks have been etched onto the stone, with the main element being a row a three cups in a straight line from the centre of the stone to its SE edge. The central cup-mark has been carved where a natural crack in the rock, running from the edge of the stone, terminates. There also seemed to be a carved faded line running along the bottom edge of the stone—but it was unclear and another visit is needed in better light to see if there’s more on the stone.

Grey Stone, Newsholme Dean, Oakworth, West Yorkshire

24/10/201624/10/2019 megalithix

Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – SE 00621 40841

Also Known as:

Carving no.2 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

Take the same directions as if you’re visiting the Cob Stone Field carving; but instead of going into the field on your right, walk down the track about 100 yards towards the large barn below. As you walk down keep your eyes peeled to the field on your left and, right up against the wall of the barn, you’ll see a large boulder resting quietly. That’s what yer after!

Archaeology & History

This large faded cup-marked rock whose western side has been split off in recent years, has a scatter of “up to 21 small shallow worn cups” on its upper surface. They can be difficult to see in some light, but they’re definitely there (as Ray Spencer’s photos clearly show), fading slowly into Nature’s winds and storms. A couple of ‘lines’ running down the edge of the stone are due to modern farm-workings.

Several other rocks in this and adjacent fields have what may be faded remains of other cup-markings, but without guidance from a geologist or a stone-mason, we can’t know for sure whether they’re authentic or not. It’s likely that there are other authentic carvings hiding in this area—they just need sniffing out!

References:

Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, West Yorkshire Archaeology Service 2003.

Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to Ray Spencer for us of his photos in this site profile. Thanks Ray.