The spring is in the trees. The roof of the church is visible past the tree
Take the B8062 North from Auchterarder, and turn right immediately after crossing Kinkell Bridge. Continue through the hamlet of Trinity Gask, and take the next turn left. The Well is situated in the wooded area of land to your left, before you reach the church on the right. I tried visiting in summer but was beaten back by the boscage of man high nettles, goose grass and brambles. An autumn visit was made, and access was readily available to the wooded area over a barbed wire fence from the field behind the wood.
Archeology & History
The Canmore description quotes from an August 1967 report by an Ordnance Survey inspector:
“Trinity Well is now dry, and all that remains is an overgrown hollow. A manhole cover nearby suggests the spring is now piped.”
On the day of my 2014 visit, the water was flowing from an issue on the field side of the woodland. There was some low walling on the field side of the enclosure, otherwise no masonry or paving was visible. Any there may have been is now either buried or robbed for building material.
The waters still flow despite a 1967 report to the contrary
The 1796 Statistical Account has this to say: ‘ The most noted well in the parish is at Trinity Gask. It is remarkable for the purity and lightness of its water; the spring is copious and perennial. Superstition, aided by the interested artifices of popish priests, raised, in times of ignorance and bigotry, this well to no small degree of celebrity. It was affirmed, that every person who was baptised with the water of this well, would never be seized with the plague….. But the extraordinary virtue of Trinity Gask well has perished with the downfall of superstition, and the introduction of a free and rational enquiry into nature and religion.’
Walling is visible behind the spring issue
The 1837 New Statistical Account goes on to say: ‘….the Trinity Well, a little to the South of the manse, of great renown in Popish days for the performing of miraculous cures, fortifying against plague, witchcraft and such other evils. The right of bleaching at this well is one of the privileges of the minister’.
The Rev. John Wilson writes, in The Gazetteer of Scotland: ‘…a noticeable object is a well famous in Roman times for alleged thaumaturgic properties…’.
Processions to the Well were made on Trinity Sunday and the first Sunday in June
References:
The (First) Statistical Account of Scotland, 1796, Volume 18, page 487
The New (Second) Statistical Account of Scotland, 1837, Volume 10, page 335
There are two ways into this glen by road. Whichever route you take (from Crieff side, or via the long Dunkeld route), when you hit the flat bottom of it, where the green fields are right by the roadside, walk along till you find the road meets the river’s edge. On the south-side of this small roadside section of the river, you’ll see a single large boulder 10-20 yards away. That’s the spot!
Archaeology & History
Described in some of the archaeology texts as just a ‘cist’, this giant stone is obviously the remains of much more. For a start, as the 1834 drawing illustrates here (coupled with several other early descriptions of the place), other visible antiquarian remains were very much apparent at Ossian’s Stone before a destructive 18th century road-laying operation tore up much of this ancient site. A marauding General Wade of the English establishment was cutting through the Scottish landscape a “military road”, to enable the English to do the usual “civilize the savages”, as they liked to put it. This curious “Giant’s Grave” was very lucky to survive.
Skene’s 1834 sketch, showing surrounding ringOssian’s Stone in the Sma’ Glen
The earliest description of events surrounding the site, as well as the attitude of the Highlanders when they saw the disrespectful English impose their usual disregard, is most insightful. In a series of letters written by a Captain Edward Burt (1759) in the first-half of the 18th century to the english monarch of the period, we read a quite fascinating account which must have been very intriguing to witness first-hand.
General Wade and his band of marauders had reached the Sma’ Glen at the end of Glen Almond and were about to continue the construction of their road. Burt (1759) wrote:
“A small part of the way through this glen having been marked out by two rows of camp colours, placed at a good distance one from another, whereby to describe the line of the intended breadth and regularity of the road by the eye, there happened to lie directly in the way an exceedingly large stone; and, as it had been made a rule from the beginning, to carry on the roads in straight lines as far as the way would permit, not only to give them a better air, but to shorten the passenger’s journey, it was resolved the stone should be removed, if possible, though otherwise the work might have been carried along on either side of it.
“The soldiers, by vast labour, with their levers and jacks, or hand-screws, tumbled it over and over till they got it quite out of the way, although it was of such an enormous size that it might be matter of great wonder how it could ever be removed by human strength and art, especially to such who had never seen an operation of that kind: and, upon their digging a little way into that part of the ground where the centre of the base had stood, there was found a small cavity, about two feet square, which was guarded from the outward earth at the bottom, top, and sides, by square flat stones.
“This hollow contained some ashes, scraps of bones, and half-burnt ends of stalks of heath; which last we concluded to be a small remnant of a funeral pile. Upon the whole, I think there is no room to doubt but it was the urn of some considerable Roman officer, and the best of the kind that could be provided in their military circumstances; and that it was so seems plainly to appear from its vicinity to the Roman camp, the engines that must have been employed to remove that vast piece of a rock, and the unlikeliness it should, or could, have ever been done by the natives of the country. But certainly the design was, to preserve those remains from the injuries of rains and melting snows, and to prevent their being profaned by the sacrilegious hands of those they call Barbarians, for that reproachful name, you know, they gave to the people of almost all nations but their own.
“…As I returned the same way from the Lowlands, I found the officer, with his party of working soldiers, not far from the stone, and asked him what was become of the urn? To this he answered, that he had intended to preserve it in the condition I left it, till the commander-in-chief had seen it, as a curiosity, but that it was not in his power so to do; for soon after the discovery was known to the Highlanders, they assembled from distant parts, and having formed themselves into a body, they carefully gathered up the relics, and marched with them, in solemn procession, to a new place of burial, and there discharged their fire-arms over the grave, as supposing the deceased had been a military officer.
“You will believe the recital of all this ceremony led me to ask the reason of such homage done to the ashes of a person supposed to have been dead almost two thousand years. It did so; and the officer, who was himself a native of the Hills, told me that they (the Highlanders) firmly believe that if a dead body should be known to lie above ground, or be disinterred by malice, or the accidents of torrents of water, &c. and care was not immediately taken to perform to it the proper rites, then there would arise such storms and tempests as would destroy their corn, blow away their huts, and all sorts of other mis-fortunes would follow till that duty was performed. You may here recollect what I told you so long ago, of the great regard the Highlanders have for the remains of their dead…”
Ossian’s Stone in his landscape
We can rest assured that the ‘Roman officer’ idea proclaimed by our early narrator is most probably wrong and that the nature of this site, when seen at ground-level even today and moreso by referencing Skene’s 1834 drawing of the place, above (which shows a more complete low surrounding ring of stones) indicate this to be of prehistoric provenance. Of intrigue to me, is the ritual of the incoming Highlanders, who took the relics onto another place and re-interred them in their own customary manner. We do not know where the Highlanders moved these (probable) prehistoric relics and I can find no supporting folklore to show precisely where they went—but a likely site would be the prehistoric cairn on the mountaintop southwest of here (at NN 8899 3018), or a site that has sometimes been confused with Ossian’s Stone a short distance to the south in the Sma’ Glen, known as the Giant’s Grave (at NN 9050 2956). This latter site would seem more probable.
Anyway…. many years after Edward Burt’s initial Letters defined the site for outsiders, one Thomas Newte (1791) came a-wandering hereby. He found that the account of General Wade’s intrusion was still on the tongues of local people, along with additions of further giant-lore and Fingalian tales, typical of the Creation myths of our early ancestors. In typically depreciative English manner Newte told:
“In that awful part of Glen Almon, already mentioned, where lofty and impending cliffs on either hand make a solemn and almost perpetual gloom, is found Clachan-Of-Fian, or monumental Stone of Ossian. It is of uncommon size, measuring seven feet and an half in length, and five feet in breadth. About fifty years ago, certain soldiers, employed under General Wade in making the Military Road from Stirling to Inverness, through the Highlands, raised the stone by large engines, and discovered under it a coffin full of burntbones. This coffin consisted of four gray stones, which still remain, such as are mentioned in Ossian’s Poems. Ossian’s Stone, with the four gray stones in which his bones are said to have been deposited, are surrounded by a circular dyke, two hundred feet in circumference, and three feet in height. The Military Road passes through its centre.”
Cole’s 1911 plan of stone & surrounding ringOssian Stone by Fred Cole
From hereon, many other writers and travellers came to see this great legendary stone within the depleted remains of its embanked circle—and thankfully it hasn’t been disturbed any further, still being visible to this day. The greatest ‘archaeological’ attention the site has received was from the early pen of great antiquarian Fred Coles (1911). On his journey here, after travelling past a large white stone which was mistakenly named as Ossian’s Stone by the usual contenders, he and his friend reached the right place:
“close to a strip of ground where the river and road almost touch each other, and immediately below the steepest of the crags of Dun More on the eastern side and the debris slopes of Meall Tarsuinn on the west, a most impressive environment, be the stone a prehistoric monument or not! The spot is interesting for itself, apart from all legend; and the remains consist of a mighty monolith…and a narrow grassy mound…to its east, with a few earthfast blocks set edgewise near its eastern extremity. Close to the roadside, but at the same level of 690 feet above the sea, there is a slab-like stone set up, measuring 3 feet in width, 1 foot 3 inches in thickness, and about 2 feet 6 inches in height. A space of 63 feet separates this block…from the huge rhomboidal mass called Ossian’s Stone. Five feet east of the latter is the base of the grassy mound which measures about 12 feet in length, 4 feet in greatest breadth, and 3 feet 10 inches in height. To the north and the south in a slightly curving line are set the six small slabs shown. There seems also to be a vague continuation of this strange alignment in both directions. All over the ground between A and B, are many strangle low parallel ridges of smallish stones having a general direction of nearly north and south. The rest of the ground is grassy, and here and there a little stony. In the plan all the stones are drawn larger than exactly to scale.
“The great stone is 8 feet high and has a basal girth of 27 feet. Several small stones lie near it. Such are the facts as at present to be observed on the ground.”
Section of outlying grass-covered low ring, just visibleGeological cup-marks?
There are two small conjoined cup-marks on top of the stone, but these seem to be geological in nature. The precise nature of the site is difficult to ascertain without excavation; but the Royal Commission lads reckon it to be a prehistoric ‘cist’ or grave in their own analysis, based mainly on the quoted literary texts. The surrounding ‘ring’ of small stones doesn’t seem to have captured their attention too much; but the site needs contextualizing within this damaged circular enclosure, which appears to have been a cairn circle initially, of some sort, with Ossian’s huge stone resting over the grave of one late great ancestral character, probably placed here thousands of years back in the Bronze Age… A truly fascinating place in truly gorgeous landscape.
Folklore
The glen itself has a scattering of giant lore associated with Finn and/or Ossian. A nearby cave was one of the places where this legendary character, and subsequent bards, were said to have spent time.
There are a small number of heavy rocks presently placed on top of Ossian’s Stone. These may be due to the site being used as a “lifting stone”: a sort of rite of passage found at a number of sites in the Perthshire mountains and across the Highlands to indicate a boy’s strength before entering manhood. Not until they have lifted and deposited a very heavy rock onto the boulder can they rightly become chief or leader, etc.
The poet William Wordsworth wrote about Ossian’s Stone, calling it “Glen Almein, or The Narrow Glen”:
In this still place, remote from men,
Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen;
In this still place, where murmurs on
But one meek streamlet, only one:
He sang of battles, and the breath
Of stormy war, and violent death;
And should, methinks, when all was past,
Have rightfully been laid at last
Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent
As by a spirit turbulent;
Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,
And everything unreconciled;
In some complaining, dim retreat,
For fear and melancholy meet;
But this is calm; there cannot be
A more entire tranquillity.
Does then the Bard sleep here indeed?
Or is it but a groundless creed?
What matters it? I blame them not
Whose Fancy in this lonely Spot
Was moved; and in such way expressed
Their notion of its perfect rest.
A convent, even a hermit’s cell,
Would break the silence of this Dell:
It is not quiet, is not ease;
But something deeper far than these:
The separation that is here
Is of the grave; and of austere
Yet happy feelings of the dead:
And, therefore, was it rightly said
That Ossian, last of all his race!
Lies buried in this lonely place.
References:
Anonymous, Tourists Guide to Crieff, Comrie and the Vale of Strathearn, Crieff
1874.
Take the A822 road south out of Crieff and less than half a mile down, in a field on the east side of the road is the giant solitary standing stone of Dargill. On the opposite side of the road from here (roughly) is a small country lane. Go along here and past the third field on your left, park up. Look down the fields for a coupla hundred yards and you’ll see the standing stone. Make your way there by following the field-edges.
Archaeology & History
Concraig stone, near Crieff
Closer to the larger town of Crieff than it is to the village of Muthill, this seven-foot tall standing stone, leaning at an angle to the north and with a small scatter of stones around its base, stands alone near the side of the field, feeling as if others once lived close by. It’s set within a distinctly nurturing landscape, enclosed all round instead of shouting out to the hills, with that nourishing female quality, less commonly found than those stones on the high open moors. The only real ‘opening’ into a wider landscape here was mentioned by the local writer Andrew Finlayson (2010), “to the distant east.” Whether this possessed any astronomical-calendrical importance hasn’t yet been explored.
Concraig, looking southFred Coles 1911 sketch
The stone was first highlighted on the 1863 Ordnance Survey map—and described in their Name Book as “a large upright Stone adjacent to and South-east of Broadley about 8 feet high and traditionally said to be either the remains of a Druidical Temple or in some way associated with the Druidical period”—but since then it hasn’t fared very well in antiquarian tomes. Fred Coles (1911), as usual, noted it in one of his Perthshire surveys, but could find very little information from local people about the place, simply telling us that,
“in an open field about 300 yards to the north-west of Concraig, there stands this irregularly four-sided block of conglomerate schist… The stone measures 9 feet 3 inches round the base and stands 7 feet 3 inches in height. About halfway up its eastern face it has been broken so as to leave a very distinct ledge.”
What appears to be cup-markings on the southern-face of the stone are just Nature’s handiwork.
Take the directions to find the Carn Ban giant cairn. Once there, you’re in the middle of the enclosure—or near enough!
Archaeology & History
This is one of several very large extensive prehistoric enclosures that stretch across the undulating rocky plains of this wild moorland, high up below the mountain-tops south of Aberfeldy. Although humans are scarce up here nowadays, in ancient times it was a very different ballgame.
Internal line of wallingEastern edge walls
Extensive and well constructed walling, measuring an average of 2-3 yards across and several feet high in places, encircles the giant White Cairn some distance away from it, running for a third-of-a-mile (0.5km) in a contorted oval shape. The walling is pretty much continuous except for where the modern tracks have destroyed two sections of it (and other monuments within) and where entrances or ‘doors’ allowed access on the west, north and eastern sides. The circuitous route of the walls appears to start and end at a small unnamed stream at its southern end.
Outer northeastern walling
Inside the perimeter walls, there are scattered examples of simple hut circles and cairns—some singular, others for families, and others that may be clearance cairns. It’s difficult to say without excavations. On the top northwestern side of the enclosure there is another, smaller enclosure attached to the main mass—seemingly earlier in construction than the giant creature its attached to—which overlooks the curious Shaman’s Lodge double hut-circle 75 yards to the west. This and much of the internal area was, when we visited, covered in extensive and deep heather, so we couldn’t get a clear picture of the entire site.
We might never know exactly how many people used this site, but we can say with some certainty, due to the remains found inside and around the place, that it was used by lots of people over many centuries, not just for what modern homo-profanus defines as ‘utilitarian’ purposes, but also important rituals were practised herein (though we are looking at an ahistorical period before the boundary of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ had been defined).
For antiquarians and explorers, this region is a must! A weekend of sleeping rough up here might well be in order!
References:
Stewart, Margaret E.C., “Strath Tay in the Second Millenium BC – A Field Survey”, in Proceedings Society Antiquaries Scotland, volume 92, 1961
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks again to Paul Hornby for his assistance with site inspection, and additional use of his photos.
Take the same directions to reach the giant Carn Ban prehistoric tomb. Follow the track past the tomb further onto the moorland until you reach a small wooden bridge over the small burn. From here, walk straight north off-path onto the moor for 100 yards and a small rise in the land, with several cairns just below it, is the site in question.
Archaeology & History
Hut circle are hut circles – right? Well, usually that’s the case. We find them attached to, or within, or outlying prehistoric enclosures and can date from anywhere between the neolithic and Iron Age periods. With the site we’re looking at here, on the outer western side of Glen Cochill’s southernmost giant enclosure, there’s something amiss….or maybe that should be, “something rather peculiar.”
Mr Hornby, hut-sideShamans Lodge walling
Paul Hornby found it a few weeks ago during an exploration of the region’s prehistory. We went in search of, and found, the giant Carn Ban close by, but noticed curious archaeological undulations ebbing in and out of the heathlands: cairns, walls, hut circles, settlements, more cairns—and then this!
Consisting of two slightly larger-than-average ovals of walled stone, probably Bronze Age in date, the first impression was of a remarkably well-preserved site (and that it is!), seemingly of an elongated stretch of walling, with a central wall that split it into two halves. Each ‘hut circle’ was found to be between six and seven yards across, with the two conjoined architectural features giving an overall NW-SE length of 14 yards. But the more we looked at this, the more obvious it became that this was originally one single hut circle—the lower southeastern one—with an additional one that was added and attached onto the northwestern side at a later date, probably several centuries later.
Lower earlier hut circle, with upper later hut circle attached
Walking around the structure we found that the very well-preserved walls—about 2 feet wide in places and rising a foot or so above the compacted peat—had been built onto a raised platform of earth. This was no ordinary hut circle! The ground beneath it seems to have been raised and supported and on the southern side in particular it is notable that other building stones are compacted into the peat. There may even be the remains of a secondary outer wall on this southern edge, where it seems that the entrance was made.
Small group of cairns 15 yards away
Here’s the curious bit: immediately outside the northwestern and southern walls are small prehistoric tombs, or cairns. Not just one or two, but more than a dozen of them, all constructed within 20 yards of this curiously raised double hut circle. Literally, a small prehistoric house of some form was raised in the centre of a prehistoric graveyard—and it doesn’t end here.
Of at least three giant enclosures in this region, and what looks like a very well-preserved prehistoric tribal hall or meeting place, there are upwards of a hundred tombs scattered nearby. Two cairn circles were also found about 100 yards to the north, one of which was damaged by a military road a few centuries ago.
Close-up of walling
I give this double-roomed abode the somewhat provocative title of the Shaman’s Lodge because of its setting: surrounded by tombs, the ‘house’ would seem to have been a deliberate setting erected in the Land of the Dead here. I hope you can forgive my imaginative mind seeing this as a structure where, perhaps, a medicine woman would give rites to the dead, either for those being buried in the small graves, or rites relating to the giant White Cairn of the ancestors close by. Shamans of one form or another occur in every culture on Earth and have been traced throughout all early cultures. If no such individuals ever existed within the British Isles, someone needs to paint one helluva good reason as to why they believe such a thing….
When the heather grows back here, the site will disappear again beneath the vegetation. It is unlikely to re-appear for quite sometime, so I recommend that anyone wanting to have a look at this does so pretty quick before our Earth covers it once again….
References:
Stewart, Margaret E.C., “Strath Tay in the Second Millenium BC – A Field Survey”, in Proceedings Society Antiquaries Scotland, volume 92, 1961
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks again to Paul Hornby for his assistance with site inspection, and additional use of his photos.
Take the A826 road south out of Aberfeldy, uphill – and uphill. Several miles up, past the roadside Loch na Craige, and past the solitary farmhouse of Scotston, you’re getting close. A few hundred yards past here watch out for the small bridge over the small burn; and literally another half-mile past this, keep your eyes peeled for the small track on your right, onto the moors. Walk 70 yards on the track and there, on your left, it rises from the heather!
Archaeology & History
Carn Ban, Glen Cochill (photo credit, Paul Hornby)
This giant neolithic tomb in the middle of a beautiful nowhere is perhaps the tomb of an ancestral King or Queen, later idolised into creation myths by our heathen ancestors who, we know, lived across this huge moorland plain for countless centuries. One account tells that “a circle of free-standing boulders set at irregular intervals” used to surround the cairn, but this seems to have gone.
Southeastern quadrant
Measuring 21 yards (19.2m) across east-west, and just over 21 yards (19.3m) north-south, this is quite a large construction made up of thousands of small stones in a near-perfect ring that measures 68 yards (62m) in circumference. The cairn seems to have been built in three layers, with its outer defining ring of medium-sized rocks, upon which a layer of typical cairn-spoil stones were laid. A couple of yards within this, a second internal ring has been set consisting of much larger stones, more typical of those found in small stone circles or average ring-cairns. Within this, the cairn seems to have been raised again and another large deposit of countless stones were scattered, with many pieces of white quartz (very common in this area) incorporated in the construction.
Capstone and outer ringSection of internal ring
At the very centre of the cairn, at least one large central ‘tomb’ or cist is clearly evident. Within this cist were found the severely damaged ruins of a small decorated beaker, in which, perhaps, the ashes of the dead might have once been found. A very large and heavy capstone that covered the central tomb, has been rolled over and lays just off-centre. No rock art seems visible on this capstone, but we were unable to check its underside. When standing here at the middle of the tomb, you are four feet above the average ground-level of the surrounding moorland.
Section of cairn edgeImaginative reconstruction of beaker in central tomb
Curiously and erroneously reported by Margaret Stewart (1961) to have “been completely removed”, this large and very visible monument lives near the middle of a very large and extensive prehistoric enclosure, whose walled remains extend for some distance all round this section of the moors. Within this arena we find large numbers of other architectural features, including many smaller cairns, some hut circles and additional lines of internal prehistoric walling. Just a few yards south of the tomb itself, we can clearly see a length of walling running east-west and another seemingly reaching up to the White Cairn. Whether these were built at the same time, or later, is difficult to say.
In the event that you visit this site, take your time! All round here, mainly to the north and west, you will find masses of prehistoric remains, none of which has been adequately excavated. A few hundred yards north is an extended necropolis that doesn’t appear to have been surveyed.
References:
Stewart, Margaret E.C., “Strath Tay in the Second Millenium BC – A Field Survey”, in Proceedings Society Antiquaries Scotland, volume 92, 1961
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks again to Paul Hornby for his assistance with site inspection, and additional use of his photos.
Take the same directions to locate the cup-and-ring stone of Ballochraggan 12. There are several rocks adjacent. The one immediately next to it, to the northeast, is the one you’re looking for. Be gentle and careful if you’re gonna look at it — deadly serious, be very careful indeed!
Archaeology & History
One of the most intriguing and most fascinating of all the prehistoric carvings I’ve yet to discover. Not that this was all my own work. If it hadn’t been for Paul Hornby, we might have simply walked past it as being little more than a single cup-marked stone—and in this area, single cup-marks tend to be little more than geological in nature.
After we’d looked over several of the registered carvings close by, I did my usual meandering back and forth, stroking stones and seeing if there were any carvings that had been missed by previous surveyors. And in walking past a small piece of smooth rock, a singular cupmark seemed to stand out. I walked past it, shouting across to my colleague.
“It looks like we’ve got a single cup-mark here Paul,” I said, “with possible half-ring.” Thankfully Mr Hornby gave it his better attention.
Mask Stone, with faint ‘urn’Close-up of features
The sun was still out and shining across the smooth rock surface, which tends to mean that you’re not seeing any carving on the stone quite as good as it actually is. Thankfully however, the sun was beginning to get lower and, when this happens, if we wet the rock, any carvings that might be there stand out much better. And this little fella just seemed to get better and more curious the more attention Paul gave it!
The first thing that became obvious were a series of faint carved lines above the single cup-mark. Initially these didn’t seem to merit much attention (straight lines on rock are usually more the product of geophysical action than that of humans), but as the rock got wetter, Paul saw something very distinct indeed.
“There’s a face on it!” he exclaimed. And indeed there was. A Rorschach response no doubt, but it was still very much like a face. This looked for all the world akin to the stylised olde English gentry sort of countenance, as in old cartoons. It was quite ‘distinct’, as such characters themselves insist on being! Yet around this initial face, more lines seemed to be emerging as the stone gave up more and more of its hidden story.
Standing back from an initial investigation, the carving was seen to consist of a triple-ring, but without the traditional ‘cup’ in its centre. Instead, the centre was marked simply by a small ‘dot’—perhaps, originally, being a small conglomerate hole formed as a result of another tiny harder fragment of stone falling away from its larger mass. But a ‘dot’ it was. The other carved ‘lines’ however, immediately below and attached to the triple-ring, gave us something almost unique—and another strong Rorschach response. As the photos clearly show, we have a distinct second ‘face’ made up of the same lines but in a quite different form. This ‘face’ has all the attributes we usually associate with pictures of mythical spirits, demons, or a mask—hence the name!
Paul took a series of fine photos, hoping that he could catch the image that our eyes could clearly see. And thankfully, his digital camera brought the image to life even better than our eyes did! The ‘mask’ is comprised of carved lozenge forms, akin to the more decorative ones we find at Kilmartin, and more especially around Newgrange, Ireland. We sat and talked about this: wondering and working out routes that we’d take over mountains and moors, from Ireland, to Kilmartin, then onto Ballochraggan, etching the same designs onto the rocks hereby and attaching similar mythic notions to them: of shamanism and kingship; underworlds and journeys—paradigms lost and certainly misunderstood in the non-polysemia of many modern academics.
Lozenges and rings
…The stone here was still slightly covered over and, beneath the loose grasses, another feature emerged of another petroglyphic rarity. At the topmost western side of the rock a straight line ran across the surface, seemingly marked by the hand of man, with a curious little line almost doubling back on itself for just an inch or so, and then feeling to run down the stone, towards the concentric rings and the face below. When we stood back and took the photos, this line and its tracer took on a form that I’ve only seen echoed in one of the Netherlargie tombs at Kilmartin, Argyll, 44.4 miles (73km) to the west. It is very distinct.
The beaker, rings & ‘face’
Spuriously ascribed as being ‘axe’ carvings (oh how archaeologists love this Rorschach projection), the Netherlargie North tomb cover-stone in Kilmartin has a series of burial ‘urns’ or beakers carved onto the rock, amidst a scattered collection of cup markings. (Beckensall 2005:73-4; Bradley 1983:92-3; Royal Commission 1971:68-70; Twohig 1972, etc) Here too at Ballochraggan we find another such symbol, but just a singular example, much larger and more clearly a beaker or urn, as are traditionally found within many old neolithic and Bronze Age tombs; although no tomb is immediately apparent at this Ballochraggan carving.
The entire carving is very faint indeed (you can’t even see it when you’re looking directly at it unless conditions are good) showing that it remained open to the elements for thousands of years. Other adjacent carvings lack the erosion that we find on this one, even on those which, as archaeologist Lisa Samson said, is “softer sandstone rock than this one”—implying that it’s one of the older carvings in this incredible cluster.
References:
Beckensall, Stan, The Prehistoric Rock Art of Kilmartin, Kilmartin Trust: Kilmartin 2005.
Bradley, Richard, Altering the Earth, Society of Antiquaries Scotland: Edinburgh 1993.
Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Argyll – volume 6: Mid-Argyll and Cowal, HMSO: Edinburgh 1971.
Twohig, Elizabeth Shee, The Megalithic Art of Western Europe, Clarendon: Oxford 1981.
Acknowledgments: Huge thanks again to Mr Paul Hornby for his considerable help with this site, and for use of his photos.
Take the same directions as if you’re visiting the Ballochraggan 12 carving, or nearby standing stone. Literally 10 yards above the leaning monolith, you’ll see what looks like a glacial rock drop ahead of you (though it’s actually volcanic). That’s the stone you want!
Archaeology & History
A site that was first described in Maarten von Hoek’s (1989) survey of the area, where he told this carving to be “a loose boulder (that) bears 14 cups, some possibly natural.” There is very little doubt about it—many of the ‘cups’ on this stone are indeed natural, caused directly by the erosion and subsequent falling of conglomerate rock nodules coming away from the larger rock mass, leaving holes in it that look like cup-marks, but are blatantly natural in origin.
Close-up of the cups – natural or man-made?
When Paul Hornby and I visited the site on August 28, 2014, we looked briefly at the stone and then walked on by—but we took some photos, “just in case the archaeo’s have this listed as a monument, ” I said. And they do! Several of the ‘cups’ shown in the images here might be man-made. Might…. It’s difficult to say for sure (are there any geologists in the house?) Of course, if the faint half-ring below one of these large ‘cups’ turns out to be legitimate, we’ve got a definite here. But even that looks a bit dodgy!
Despite these marks possibly being geophysical, we must not forget, nor rule out, that this rock had some importance to the neolithic or Bronze Age people who frequented this region. Natural marks on rock would be emulated by humans sometimes, or seen as elements of spirit in the stone itself—as found all over the world. A standing stone is only yards away, and we have highly impressive multiple cup-and-ring stones very close by. The natural ‘cups’ on this and other adjacent rocks may have catalysed the petroglyphs themselves.
Check it out when you visit the other, much more impressive multiple-ringed carvings hereby; but also watch out for the many conglomerate rocks still scattering this hill—some with the softer rounded nodules of rock fallen, leaving cups, and others still in place in quite a few of the stones, awaiting their own geological timing to leave more cup-marks ready for some folk to misread. (I did it misself in younger years!)
Follow the same directions as if you’re visiting the nearby Nether Glenny 1 cairn; but look into the field immediately north (through the gate on the other side of the fence) about 100 yards away and you’ll see the telling bump rising out of the grasses.
Archaeology & History
Another burial mound of roughly the same size and form as its companion 100 yards to the south, but this one appears to be more intact than its close neighbour. The top centre of the overgrown cairn seems to have been robbed sometime in the past—perhaps for use in the nearby walling; perhaps by treasure-seekers. We will probably never really know.
Nether Glenny 2 & its close neighbour
Although much overgrown in grasses (with species of shamanic fungi surrounding), the roughly circular tomb is between 3-4 feet high, roughly flat-topped, and measures 12 yards north-south, by 15 yards east-west. There is no immediate evidence of the internal tomb and it has yet to be satisfactorily excavated. A small outcrop of stones about 30 yards to the north possesses a highly impressive detailed multi-ringed neolithic petroglyph.
References:
Bailey, G.B., ‘Nether Glenny (Port of Menteith parish)’, in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, 1987.
Take the same directions as if you’re visiting any of the upper Ballochraggan petroglyphs, but 100 yards before the carvings, out in the open on the grasslands, below the reach of the forest, you’ll see the leaning stone if you wander about. You can’t really miss it!
Archaeology & History
Not included in any of the Canmore, Royal Commission or Ordnance Survey records, this standing stone appears to have eluded official records until now. Found close to the petroglyph-rich arena of the Ballochraggan complex, with attendant tombs to the east, there is the possibility that this large leaning stone was itself, once, a part of a long-gone cairn, as Paul Hornby suggested. The small cluster of stones around its base certainly adds to that idea (similar to the incredible Dunruchan cluster, more than 17 miles (28km) northeast).
The stone leans at a considerable angle from a previously upright position. When standing it would have been nearly five-feet tall and measures nearly as wide. The stone is roughly triangular in shape, above ground. What appear to be two faint cup marks on its topmost surface are very probably due to conglomerate rock erosion and not the handiwork of humans.
