Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NY 88542 74175
Archaeology & History
Site location on 1866 map
Highlighted, albeit in the past tense, as a “Druidical Temple” on the first Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1866, these megalithic remains were seen by earlier antiquarians, but seemingly met their demise sometime in the early 19th century. Some halfwit land-owners no doubt wanted their little garden extended to where local folk would have traditionally met at certain times each year—so in getting rid of the stones, it would help to keep the riff-raff away. (many of these elitists still think this way) It had certainly gone when the Northumbrian historian John Bates (1895) wrote about it, where he told simply:
“The fine circle at Nunwick, on North Tyne, described by Bishop Gibson, has long since disappeared.”
It was still standing in the 17th century, three or four thousand years after our ancestors put it there. We know this because the remains of the stone circle were told about in Gibson’s (1695) edition of Camden’s Britannia, where mention is made of “large stones erected at several places” in Northumberland, including this place where,
“near Ninwick in the Parish of Simondburn, four such stand still erected, and a fifth lies fall’n to the ground.”
The situation hadn’t changed when John Wallis (1769) visited Nunwick. On his trip to these megaliths he told that,
“In an adjoining field, called, Nunwick-east-field, were five upright stone-pillars, in a circular order; four of them perfect and entire in 1714, the other broken; the perfect ones eight feet high, and nine feet and an half over; the circumference of the area in which they stood, ninety feet.”
It was obvisouly a decent-sized circle! The great megalithic archaeologists Barnatt (1989) and Burl (2000) included the site in their respective catalogues, but could add no further details apart from saying there was a drawing made of the stones sometime around 1715 which, apparently, is in volume 15 of the History of Northumberland. Has anyone got a copy…? 🙂
References:
Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of Britain– volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1989.
Bates, John C., The History of Northumberland, Elliot Stock: London 1895.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Dodds, M.H. (ed.), A History of Northumberland – volume 15: Simonburn, Rothbury, Alwinton, etc, Andrew Reid: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1935.
Gibson, Edmund (ed.), Camden’s Britannia, F. Collins: London 1695.
Wallis, John, The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland – volume 2, W. & W. Strahan: London 1769.
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.
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
Clachan an Diridh looking E
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.”
Thom’s initial moonset alignmentThom’s 1980 ground-plan with marker stone
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)
Clachan an Diridh in 1851Clachan an Diridh, c.1920
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…
Large fallen stoneSite on the 1899 OS-map
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:
Coles 1906 planColes’ views, from S & E
“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:
Burl, Aubrey, Four Posters: Bronze Age Stone Circles of Western Europe, BAR 195: Oxford 1988.
Burl, Aubrey, A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, New Haven & London 1995.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Dixon, John H., Pitlochry, Past and Present, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1925.
Kennedy, James, Folklore and Reminiscences of Strathtay and Grandtully, Munro Press: Perth 1927.
Liddell, Colin, Pitlochry – Heritage of a Highland District, PKDL: Perth 1993.
MacMillan, Hugh, The Highland Tay: From its Source to Dunkeld, H. Virtue: London 1901.
Mitchell, Hugh, Pitlochry District: Its Topography, Archaeology and History, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1923.
Omand, Donald (ed.), The Perthshire Book, Birlinn: Edinburgh 1999.
Stevenson, J., “Prehistory,” in Omand’s The Perthshire Book, Edinburgh 1999.
Thom, Alexander, Megalithic Sites in Britain, Oxford University Press 1967.
Thom, Alexander, Megalithic Lunar Observatories, Oxford University Press 1971.
Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, H.A.W., Megalithic Rings, BAR: Oxford 1980.
Thom, A., Thom, A.S. & Burl, Aubrey, Stone Rows and Standing Stones – volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1990.
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.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NO 332 430 (approximation)
Archaeology & History
This stone circle wasn’t logged in either Barnatt (19890 or Burl’s (2000) standard megalith inventories. The only mention of it seems to be in Alex Elliott’s (1911) rare work on the region, in which he described it as being located “within the grounds of Mylnefield”. All trace of it would seem to have gone. Elliott told it to have been,
“elliptical in form and consisted of six large boulders – three at the east, three at the west, with a gap between capable of holding an equal number of stones.”
References:
Elliott Alexander, Lochee – As it Was and As it Is, J.P. Mathew: Dundee 1911.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NN 9020 0985
Also Known as:
Blackford Glebe
Brookfield House
Archaeology & History
In the 18th Century there stood, on the slight rise of the land about 150 yards south of Brookfield House, one of those “circles of stones…in the glebe”, of the sort that “are supposed to have been places of Druidical worship,” wrote John Stevenson. (1792) Sadly, sometime in the 19th Century, the entire site was uprooted and destroyed, leaving no trace of the place. Not good…. 🙁
References:
Stevenson, John, “Parish of Blackford,” in The Statistical Account of Scotland – volume 3, (edited by, John Sinclair) William Creech: Edinburgh 1792.
Along the A85 road between Comrie and St Fillans, just over a mile out of Comrie, on the right-hand side (north) of the road is the small farm-track into the fields where the ruined stone circle of Tullybannocher lives. Walk up this track (known as Maam Road), past the stones, and keep going uphill for more than a mile (literally 1 mile up, another track turns sheer right, but ignore it) where the track eventually levels-out; keep walking for another 600 yards, slightly downhill, until you reach a distinct fork in the track where you need to veer right, uphill, and keep walking up the track for ⅔-mile (1km) where you’ll eventually see a cottage ahead of you. 150 yards before this, to your left, down the slight slope and just as it begins to slope back up again on the other side, there’s some olde walling with a coupla big stones in it. It’s there!
Archaeology & History
When James MacIntosh (1888) first visited this carving in the 19th century—which is close to the curious cairn of Druim na Cille just 75 yards to the west—he described there being a group of seven large stones forming, what he thought, might have been a large enclosure. I think he was right. Several of these stones can still be seen: each of them along some ancient walling that swerves in an arc to the east. One of these stones has a number of cup-marks on it.
Fred Coles’ 1991 sketchThe carving, from the track
The design isn’t too impressive when compared to others in this neck o’ the woods, but they’re very distinct. We visited the place on a truly dark grey day: conditions that don’t usually allow for good visibility regarding cup-marks; but thankfully the cups along this stone are quite deep and hard to miss. Running along one section of the stone are what Gow called, “eleven beautifully formed cups, varying from 2¼ to 4 inches in diameter and from half an inch to an inch in depth.” When Fred Coles (1911) came here he counted thirteen cup-marks. There may be fourteen.
The stone does possess some more recent groove marks made by a metal instrument, possibly a tractor or perhaps when local workmen stuck up a microwave tower close by. Thankfully it hasn’t directly affected the cups on the stone. Check it out when you visit the nearby ring cairn.
Along the A85 road between Comrie and St Fillans, just over a mile out of Comrie, on the right-hand side (north) of the road is the small farm-track into the fields where the ruined stone circle of Tullybannocher lives. Walk up this track (known as Maam Road), past the stones, and keep going uphill for more than a mile (literally 1 mile up, another track turns sheer right, but ignore it) where the track eventually levels-out; keep walking for another 600 yards, slightly downhill, until you reach a distinct fork in the track where you need to veer right, uphill, and keep walking up the track for ⅔-mile (1km) where you’ll see a cottage ahead of you. About 50 yards before the house, down the slope on your left, a large rounded mass covered in bracken is the site you’re after.
Archaeology & History
This is an odd site, in more ways than one. In the 18th and 19th century, local people told that it was “a very ancient churchyard, so old, indeed, that the grave-stones among the rank grass are scarcely discernible.” (Carment 1882) This lore was reinforced by the fact that, as James Gow (1888) put it,
“within living memory that a burial took place here, and the tradition is that people came to bury the “wee unchristened bairns” from long distances, such as Loch Tayside, Glendochart, Balquhidder, and Strathyre.”
Looking W, at the circleThe old mound, looking SE
That’s a lot of effort and a considerable distance for some people to travel! But the age and nature of this site is curious. It very name, Drum-na-kill derives from either “ridge of the burial ground” or the “hill of the chapel” (and variants thereof)—yet there are no records of any such early church or religious cell here. That doesn’t mean, of course, that there never was one. A wandering Culdee priest may have set up camp here more than a thousand years ago after doing his service with the fading druids of Dull, less than 20 miles to the north. Such things, never written down, will obviously have happened in these mountains and cannot be discounted merely due to a lack of scripts. But we simply don’t know. When Mr Gow described the place—as “a raised enclosure 25 to 30 feet in diameter, with, a turf-covered wall or rampart 3 or 4 feet high surrounding it”—he emphasized that “in former times (it) was used as a burying ground for unbaptised infants.” (large numbers of Highlanders weren’t in the slightest bit interested in the ways of the Church) So how far back in time did this tradition go…?
Well, Gow thought the place to be an early christian site. But when Fred Coles came here more than thirty years later, during his massive survey of the Perthshire stone circles, he deemed it to be a much earlier construction. A “cairn circle” no less—which would give it a more Bronze Age footprint. And this definition has stuck. Coles (1911) told that,
Coles’ 1911 diagramRaised ‘walling’ highlighted
“This Cairn-circle is about seventy yards east of the shepherd’s cottage, and it slightly resembles others already noticed in Perthshire. It measures from crest to crest of its circular ridge 44 feet 3 inches east and west by 37 feet 10 inches north and south. Several large blocks of stone lie exposed on the crest, and many others can be felt as one walks along it. The ridge is completely oval-circular, having no break or passage-way, and encloses a flattish, rather uneven space measuring about 34 feet in diameter. The height above the outside ground at the best-preserved portions is fully 4 feet.”
More than a century later, its not changed much—although if you were to believe the updated Trove website, “the cairn has been destroyed in the process of land improvement.” Which is untrue. As the albeit darkened photos here show (we visited it on a truly dark grey day), the raised cairn, despite being covered in a mass of deep bracken, is clearly in a condition similar to what Coles described. It looks like a typical example of this type of monument, of considerable size, with reasonably well-defined edges and comprising the usual scattered mass of stones in and around it. The large boulders that Coles described don’t seem to be in evidence, but these were apparently shifted a few decades back and added to the enclosure walling to the east. To honest, only the untrained eye would miss the place! Check it out when you’re looking at the cup-marked stone, less than a hundred yards to the east…
References:
Carment, Samuel, Scenes and Legends of Comrie, James P. Mathew: Dundee 1882.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NX 8657 6668
Archaeology & History
Little is known about this stone circle, which had apparently been destroyed sometime in the first half of the 19th century. The local Rev. J. Gillespie spoke about it with the great Fred Coles (1895), who told that it was “near the manse of Kirkgunzeon.” The site was listed in Burl’s (2000) magnum opus, where he wondered if it might have been a cairn; and interestingly, when the Ordnance Survey lads came here, they spoke with a Mrs J. Moffat, the oldest inhabitant in the area, who told that,
“a circle of stones c.30 ft in diameter with a small mound in the centre stood on flat ground at NX 8657 6668. Over the years successive farmers have removed the larger stones and now only the slight mound, c.4.0 m diam. x 0.3 m high, with several clearance stones on top, survives to mark the site of the stone circle.”
References:
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Coles, Fred, “The Stone Circles of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright”, in Proceedings Society Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 29, 1895.
Highlighted on the 1884 Ordnance Survey map of the region and located beyond the far eastern end of Braceridge Lake, this legendary well has seen better days. A small well-house once covered the spring, but all we have left today is little more than a rectangular stone-lined concrete hole-in-the-ground where the waters collect (hopefully some local folk can bring it back to life). But in the 19th century it was well known, much frequented and maintained.
Not much seems to be known about its mythic history, as the traditions surrounding its dual pagan-christian dedication seem to have been forgotten. When the local writer Tom Burgess (1893) came to explore its history, he merely wrote:
“How it came to be called the Druids’ Well is not known, it is scarcely necessary to say that it can have no Druidical connection; it is very probable, however, that it was dedicated to Saint Mary long before the dam of Bracebridge Pool was made by Ralph Bracebridge in the reign of Henry V.”
Druids Well in 1917Druid’s Well in 1932
Jeremy Harte (2008) suggested that this well’s druidic association may have come from a local man, William Hutton who, in the middle of the 18th century, “speculated on a druid sanctuary near Sutton Coldfield.” But before Hutton, the 17th century Staffordshire topographer, Robert Plot, suggested that an arch-druid held residence on Barr Beacon, which is less than three miles west of here. This idea was echoed by Midgley (1904) who told that Barr Beacon “is supposed to have been a Druidical shrine.” Just over three miles to the northwest, the Druid’s Heath (a place-name derived, apparently, from an old family) at Aldridge also had its own array of folklore which, perhaps, may have had something to do with this well’s association. When Roy Palmer (1976) wrote about the Druid’s Well in his folklore survey, he told that Sutton Coldfield,
“is said once to have been the seat of the arch-druid of Britain; perhaps this was his well, which was later christianized.”
So much to choose from…
References:
Bord, Janet, Holy Wells in Britain – A Guide, HOAP: Wymeswold 2008.
Bracken, L., History of the Forest and Chase of Sutton Coldfield, Simpkin Marshall: London 1860.
Harte, Jeremy, English Holy Wells – volume 2, Heart of Albion press: Wymeswold 2008.
Midgley, W., A Short History of the Town and Chase of Suton Coldfield, Midland Counties Herald: Birmingham 1904.
Palmer, Roy, The Folklore of Warwickshire, Batsford: London 1976.
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.
About mile south of Northchurch, on the far side of the A41 dual carriageway, somewhere past the old crossroads (or perhaps even at the crossing) an ancient tree lived—and truly lived in the minds of local people, for perhaps a thousand years or so. Mentioned in the Lay Subsidy Rolls in 1307, the Cross Oak gave its name to the old building that once stood in the trees and the hill itself, at the place now known as Oak Corner. Whether or not a “cross” of any form was set up by this old oak, records are silent on the matter. Its heathen ways however, were pretty renowned! (a plaque should be mounted here)
Folklore
The first reference I’ve found of this place is in William Black’s (1883) folklore survey where he told that “certain oak trees at Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, were long famous for the cure of ague”—ague being an intense fever or even malaria. But a few years later when the local historian Henry Nash (1890) wrote about this place, he told that there was only one tree that was renowned for such curative traditions, that being the Cross Oak. He gave us the longest account of the place, coming from the old tongues who knew of it when they were young—and it had it’s very own ritual which, if abided by, would cure a person of their malady. “The legend ran thus”, wrote Mr Nash:
“Any one suffering from this disease was to proceed, with the assistance of a friend, to the old oak tree, known as Cross Oak, then to bore a small hole in the said tree, gather up a lock of the patient’s hair and make it fast in the hole with a peg, the patient then to tear himself from the tree, leaving the lock behind, and the disease was to disappear.
“This process was found to be rather a trying one for a weak patient, and by some authority unknown the practice was considerably modified. It was found to be equally efficacious to remove a lock of hair by gentle means, and convey it to the tree and peg it in securely, and with the necessary amount of faith the result was generally satisfactory. This is no mere fiction, as the old tree with its innumerable peg-holes was able to testify. This celebrated tree, like many other celebrities, has vanished, and another occupies its place, but whether it possesses the same healing virtues as its predecessor is doubtful. It is however a curious coincidence, that the bane and the antidote have passed away together.”
The lore of this magickal tree even found its way into one of J.G. Frazer’s (1933) volumes of The Golden Bough, where he told how the “transference of the malady to the tree was simple but painful.”
Traditions such as this are found in many aboriginal cultures from different parts of the world, where the spirit of the tree (or stone, or well…) will take on the illness of the person for an offering from the afflicted person: basic sympathetic magick, as it’s known. Our Earth is alive!
References:
Black, William G., Folk Medicine, Folk-lore Society: London 1883.
Frazer, James G., The Scapegoat, MacMillan: London 1933.
Jones-Baker, Doris, The Folklore of Hertfordshire, B.T. Batsford: London 1977.
Nash, Henry, Reminiscences of Berkhamsted, W. Cooper & Nephews: Berkhamsted 1890.
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.
Travel along the B867 road from Bankfoot to Dunkeld (running roughly parallel with the A9) and you’ll reach the hamlet of Waterloo about one mile north of Bankfoot. As you approach the far end of the village, keep your eyes peeled for the small turning on your left and head up there for just over a mile. The road runs to a dead end at Meikle Obney farm, but shortly before reaching there you’ll pass this large standing stone on the right-side of the road, just along the fence-line. It’s almost impossible to miss!
Archaeology & History
This is one of “the large rude upright stones found in the parish” that William Marshall (1880) mentioned briefly, amidst his quick sojourn into the Druidic history of Perthshire. It’s an impressive standing stone on the southern edges of the Obney Hills that doesn’t seem to be in its original position. And it’s another one that was lucky to survive, as solid metal staples were hammered into it more than a hundred years ago when it was incorporated into the fencing, much like the massive Kor Stone 6½ miles south-west of here.
Site shown on 1867 mapWitch’s Stone at roadside
Shown on the first Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1867, its bulky 6½-foot-tall body stands all alone on this relatively flat plain, with open views to the east, south and west. It gave me the distinct impression that it was once part of a larger megalithic complex, but I can find no additional evidence to substantiate this. Call it a gut-feeling if you will. Intriguingly, the closest site to this are two standing stones just out of view literally ⅔-mile (1.07km) to the northeast, aligned perfectly to the Witch’s Stone! Most odd…
Folklore
The story behind this old stone is a creation myth that we find all over the country, but usually relating to prehistoric tombs more than monoliths. The great Fred Coles (1908) wrote:
“the common legend is told of a witch who, when flying through the air on some Satanic behest, let the Stone fall out of her apron.”
Marshall, William, Historic Scenes in Perthshire, William Oliphant: Edinburgh 1880.
Stewart, Elizabeth, Dunkeld – An Ancient City, Munro Press: Perth 1926.
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.
