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.
From Blair Atholl village along the B8079 road, take the minor road signposted to the Bridge of Tilt and go all the way to the top, taking the same directions as if you’re visiting the large prehistoric cairn of Monzie. As you walk towards Monzie farmhouse, you need to look at the large end-facing wall and on the ground at the bottom-left corner you’ll see this old cup-marked stone, next to an old bullaun. It’s probably polite to knock and ask the farmer—who we found to be very helpful indeed. (huge thanks fella!)
Archaeology & History
This is an intriguing carving, inasmuch as its present habitat isn’t it original home. When we visited the old stone recently, the farmer was very helpful and told us what he knew of it, which was, he said, “not much.” In pointing out where it had originally come from, he pointed south, “past the fields – somewhere over there. My dad knew about it,” he told, and thought that he may have been the one who found it. Anyhow, it was his dad who brought it to the place where it now sits: right up against the edge of the house on its southeast corner.
“It looks like it might have come from a tomb,” I said, but he didn’t know about that. The giant cairn in the fields past his farmhouse certainly wasn’t where it had come from. Quite the opposite direction… And so it transpired when I looked at the very menial archaeological notes that have been written about it.
When archaeologist Margaret Stewart noted the carving in the 1960s, she told how the stone had reportedly been found in 1953 by the ruined lime-kiln (NN 9052 6672), just above the western shore of Loch Moraig. But what she didn’t know was that the lime-kiln was built at the edge of the prehistoric tomb that was known to local people as Carndeshal, or Cairn Deshal. The word deshal means sunwise, or the direction taken by the sun, clockwise, as in the word deosil. It is usually associated with a ceremonial procession. The cup-marked stone probably came from this cairn when it had been demolished and was thankfully saved by the farmer.
Altogether there are 24 or 25 mainly well-defined cup-marks on this thin slab, covering most of the surface. In a couple of places on the stone, two of the cups are conjoined. There are apparently no cup-marks on the other side of the stone.
Acknowledgements: To my awesome Naomi – for getting us up here.
Along the B8079 road in Blair Atholl village, take the minor road signposted to the Bridge of Tilt. After half-a-mile, where the road splits, keep to the right and head further uphill and, where the almost-track-like road splits again another quarter mile up, bear to the right again and just keep going uphill for nearly two miles until your reach the large car-park on the left. Park here. Note the long straight line of walling on the top-side of the car-park that runs to the NW. Walk along the other side of the wall and, after 100 yards, you go down the marshy dip and, once it rises up onto the small rise, truly truly truly keep your eyes peeled to see what lays beneath your feet. They’re there – honestly!
Archaeology & History
As the years drift by, the remains of these two hut circles—separated barely ten yards from each other—have become increasingly difficult to see. Upon our visit here, the hillside vegetation was at its lowest at the end of the Winter, yet it was still difficult to see them clearly, even when we stood right in them! The land here is marshy and it’s spreading more and more into the soil, slowly but surely taking these old circles back to Earth, where all things return….
It’s there, under your nose!
The circles—and their half-dozen companions on the far-side of the wall—were shown to the archaeologist Margaret Stewart in the 1960s by the farmer at Monzie, who made notebooks of various places and traditions in this area. Both of them are between 12 and 13 yards across, with the outlining walls that define them still thankfully visible above ground level—just! The hut circle that’s closest to the modern wall is more oval-shaped than its circular companion, both of whom have their respective doors or entrances on the southwestern sides—but these were equally difficult to make out when we came here.
To be honest, if you’re wanting to see the hut circles, I’d head for those on the other side of the wall, two or three hundred yards to the west, which are much easier to find and are in better condition.
Acknowledgements: To my awesome Naomi – for getting us up here.
Along the B8079 road in Blair Atholl village, take the minor road signposted to the Bridge of Tilt. After half-a-mile, where the road splits, keep to the right and head further uphill and, where the almost-track-like road splits again another quarter mile up, bear to the right again and just keep going uphill for nearly two miles until your reach the large car-park on the left. Park here and then take the dirt-track to the farm (truly friendly helpful folk) where, in the field to the rear of the buildings, a large unmissable mound rises up!
Archaeology & History
This is a bit of a beauty! Hiding away on the southern edges of the Cairngorms we find this huge archetypal burial mound, 35 yards across and all but covered nowadays in deep layers of soil. But it looks good. When you walk onto its crown, about twelve feet up, you see and feel beneath you the scattered mass of small rocks and stones that comprise the monument as a whole, from top to bottom. On its south-western side, the cairn is lower and elongated: this is due, on the whole, to where field clearance stones were pushed up against the monument many decades ago, making that side of it look bigger than it originally was.
Naomi on top for size!Monzie cairn, looking W
Curiously perhaps, no archaeological attention of any worth has been give to the site apart from the usual estimates of its size and a guesstimate of it being neolithic or Bronze Age in nature (an easy thing to suggest). On top, just beneath the grasses, is what may be the section of a small cist, but this may just be a fortuituous formation. Excavation is required! It’s one of a small number of old cairns and tombs in this locale, but this seems to be the biggest — unless, of course, the lost but legendary Carn Deshal, less than a mile to the south, stood larger…
Acknowledgements: To my awesome Naomi – for getting us up here.
Like many of the Craig Hill carvings, this takes some finding when the heather’s deep… If you can locate the Craig Hill hut circle (there are actually several of them close to each other), face uphill (looking at the trees) and then from the hut circle walk diagonally to your right (northeast) and walk up the slope for 30-40 yards. A large boulder is in front of you and, just past it at the edge of a small rock-face, a fallen tree is your marker. Just a few yards above and past this is an earthfast elongated stretch of rock. You’ll find it…
Archaeology & History
Some cups & 2-in-a-ring
On my visit to this carving I arrived near the end of the day. Within the hour, beneath an already cloudy grey sky, night had fallen; and so, obviously, my assessment of this carvings design was somewhat hampered…
It’s one of several quite separate petroglyphs that almost collide with each other on adjacent rock faces. Etched across this, an elongated slightly convex stone, we find a series of cup-marks in no particular order, mainly running along the topmost section of the stone. Others fall away at the edges, with what seemed like one or two at the more northeastern end of the stone. However, due to the poor lighting when I came here, I struggled to make out the full design and so probably missed some important elements. I’ll update this if/when I visit it again – or if a fellow antiquarian visits the spot and sends in some good images.
Cup-Marked Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NH 814 503
Archaeology & History
Somewhere on the outskirts of Kilravock Castle grounds sat (or still sits, hopefully) one of our country’s legendary healing stones bound within the animistic veil of a cup-marked stone. It seems to have fallen off the archaeological registers (if it was ever included!) and so I add it here in the hope that someone can locate it and let us know of its present condition.
Described during a meeting of the Inverness Scientific Society by a Dr Grigor in a short presentation on cup-marked stones at Nairn in July 1884, the matter of some faint traditions concerning a tiny number of cup and ring stones in Scotland was mentioned, and,
“Dr Grigor said he would be able, next day, at the roadside on the Kilravock property, to point out a large rounded stone of gneiss, in the centre of which is a large cut cup-mark of a diameter of six or seven inches which, fifty years ago, was resorted to by many, and water was taken from it long distances. The water was believed to cure skin diseases, but it was principally used for washing warts on the human subject, which it was believed the water quickly removed. It was also particularly in repute for removing warts from cow’s teats.”
The custom described here sounds very similar to others found at so-called ‘Wart Stones’ in England and Scotland (there was one that existed a short distance from where I grew up near Eccleshill, West Yorkshire). Several miles west of here is the cluster of prehistoric carvings in the Clava complex, but this one at Kilravock seems to have fallen off the radar. Does anyone know if it can still be seen? (the grid-reference given to this site is an approximation)
References:
Grigor, Dr, “Cup Marked Stones,” in Transactions Inverness Scientific Society Field Club, volume 3, 1884.
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.
First described in the Object Name Book* of 1867 as being “the remains of a cairn in which D MacMillan of Glenbarr says a cist was found”, this prehistoric tomb was subsequently going to be destroyed in the 1950s by the farmer when local researchers Mr & Mrs J.G. Scott (1958) took to checking the place out before its demise. And it was a damn good job they did! The cairn still remains to this day—albeit in a very dilapidated state. The assistant editor of The Prehistoric Society journal, Ian Longworth (1959), wrote an account of the findings, telling:
“A small mound, apparently the remains of a cairn, was excavated on the farm of Glencreggan by Mr and Mrs J.G. Scott. The mound was roughly oval in shape, about 20 feet by 14 feet in size, and about 2 feet in height, with its longer axis lying almost E-W. A large stone slab, about 8 by 3 feet in size, lay against its N corner.
“The cairn was found to consist of a small and fairly compact core of stones intermixed with sand and clay, surrounded by a rather ill-defined outer ring of boulders, the intervening space being largely filled with earth. Remains of a cremated burial were found beneath the centre core, but there was no trace of a cist, and the bones seemed to be scattered, giving the impression that the cairn might mark the spot where the cremation took place. Apart from a flint flake, the only finds were two small boulders, each bearing a single cup-mark, which were incorporated in the material of the centre core.”
Of the two cup-marked stones found beneath the cairn, they’re presently living in some box somewhere in the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, who are very approachable when it comes to viewing them if you make an appointment. I have to say though, one of them may be natural, as it has the distinct look of being the creation of molluscs, who live in profuse numbers just off the coast hereby. Nonetheless, they were left in the tomb as offerings to the ancestral spirits here.
References:
Bede, Cuthbert, Glencreggan – 2 volumes, Longman Green: London 1861.
Longworth, Ian, “Notes on Excavations in the British Isles, 1958,” in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, volume 25, 1959.
Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Argyll – volume 1: Kintyre, HMSO: Edinburgh 1971.
* The Object Name Book website recently got “upgraded”, to make it better, smilier, user-friendly, and the usual buzzwords we all hear when things are just gonna get worse. The website is now a real pain-in-the-arse to use since those halfwit management-types upgraded the site, making it much more hard work to find anything. Fucking idiots! Who pays these morons?!
Highlighted on the earliest Ordnance Survey maps of the island, roughly halfway along the Broadford to Heaste road on the right (west) side you will come across the Tabar Ruadh (Gaelic for “Red Well”). For many generations at this point was a Chalybeate well where villagers would stop and drink in a pewter mug from outlet of cast iron pipe which connected to the stone well some nine feet from the road. It was a major stopping point for their horses and ponies to take a drink too.
This set up was functioning in the early 1980’s. At that time I talked to Heaste locals who remembered fishermen from their village taking bottles of this water to pregnant women in the village of Elgol. It was known then for it’s healing properties; this was the early 20th century. The pewter mug was stolen and with road widening and the pipe removed, the site was becoming increasingly overgrown and in danger of being lost for ever.
Site shown on 1881 mapWater under the well cover
For the last fifteen years I have been walking this road and had made it a determination to find this well. Success this summer! — and the hidden overgrown well was cleaned out a new steel pipe added. Chalybeate water now flows and a wooden box is at the roadside with a tin mug. On a wet roadside ditch this red water is very obvious where it joins the road.
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 Kenmore village, just as you’re going out of the village towards Aberfeldy (A827 road), turn right as if you’re going on the minor road on the south-side of Loch Tay. Almost immediately on this road, turn left and take the tiny, steep road uphill towards Amulree. After 2½ miles uphill, the road begins to level out and a small loch is on your left (north). Just past it, on the same side, a track runs onto the moors. Walk along here for nearly a mile where the track splits: keep to your left and the track follows the line of walling. Now’s the hard bit: after literally ⅔-mile, walk downhill and cross the burn (stream), then less than 50 yards up the slope on the other side, zigzag around…
Archaeology & History
Craig Hill circle looking SW
Overlooking a small (unnamed) burn immediately to the right and a large wide marshy hollow to the front, is this small and seemingly singular hut circle, in a good state of preservation, surrounded by the scattered mass of cup-and-ring stones—some complex, some very plain—all over this moorland slope. It’s a very long journey to take just to visit a single hut circle, but I’d assume that you’d be wanting to see the petroglyphs surrounding it too—so mebbe have a look at this whilst you’re fondling the rock art!
Internally this is quite a small circle, measuring barely 5 yards (east-west) by 6 yards (north-south), seemingly with its entrance on the north. Its small size suggests it was constructed for the use of just one person; two at the very most. The structure is still in very good condition considering its age (possibly Bronze Age), with minimal damage apart from Nature’s wind and weathering. The circle is made up primarily of a number of large rocks with many filling stones, with the walling being a yard or so wide all round. In all likelihood, the rest of the building would have been made of timber, with a typical tented roof. It’s an excellent spot to base yourself to explore all the cup-and-ring stones on these slopes. Perhaps, just perhaps, this might have been a shaman’s hut, looking over the ancestral images on the rocks hereby…. ♥
Take the long steep zigzag road from Kenmore to Amulree, and just where the road begins to level out, park up near the isolated hut by the roadside at the side of the lochan. Just past here, a track on your left takes you onto the moors, past the lochan. Nearly a mile along the track splits: bear to the right, uphill slightly, then it’ll wind downhill and you’ll pass another track on your right. Ignore it, keep walking along and where you find a grassy little passing-place on your right—stop! Now walk uphill, onto the moor, through the heather for 175 yards and the land has levelled out. Look around!
Archaeology & History
Cupmarks from above
I came across this very basic carving when checking out a couple of others close by and found that it hadn’t been recorded before. It’s nothing special to look at, but is an outlier of the main Craig Hill cluster of carvings a few hundred yards to the west. The design consists of at least two cup-marks that have been etched near the top of the rock, although when I wet the stone it seemed as if a third one was next to the other two, as if in a line. The sun was at its peak when I found it, which meant that I couldn’t get any decent photographs to illustrate this—even when I watered the olde thing! It’s another carving that will only be of interest to the real petroglyph fanatics amongst you.
