Tag: Scottish heritage

Megget Stane, Yarrow, Selkirkshire

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Standing Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NT 15061 20292

Also Known as:

  1. Meggat Stane

Archaeology & History

Small stone by the roadside

This curiously-named and barely frequented Megget Stane has seen better days.  Found in the middle of a veritable nowhere, when Duncan Fraser (1901) first wrote about it there was only a solitary pathway running between these uninhabited glens, with this old stone standing as a solitary sentinel—albeit a not very grand one!  It’s present position at the roadside was given it following a forced removal into a nearby ditch, when the old Edinburgh District Water authority who built the Talla Reservoir a couple of miles away all but destroyed it!  On one of Mr Fraser’s many visits, in August 1899, he found what he called his “old friend…lying among the heather broken into three pieces.”

“I frankly confess that this wanton act of vandalism filled me with the deepest indignation,” he wrote—and so he sought to redress the situation and find out who’d damaged the old stone.  It transpired that,

“The Edinburgh District Water Trust had a few months before this time purchased from Lord Wemyss the ground at the head of Meggat, which slopes down to Talla.  In marking off their new possession, the Trust had run a strong five-barred wire fence along the march, and as Meggatstane stood on the line, why, Meggatstane was bound to go!”

He contacted a local farmer and, between them, they protested to the water company who, eventually, fixed the pieces of the stone back together and erected it in the position that we see today, very close to its original spot.  Prior to it being damaged, Fraser told that it stood four feet tall, but when cementing it all back together again, some of its original size was lost.

Its history and legends had been forgotten even in his day and despite enquiries with other local wanderers, all that was ever told of it were variants on it standing hereby since time immemorial.  For my part, I’m somewhat sceptical about it having a prehistoric provenance, despite the Royal Commission (1957) lads suggesting a Bronze Age origin—but that’s just my own feeling on the place.  I’m more inclined to see this as an early mediaeval stone—but would love to be wrong.  It may, perhaps, even date from Viking times…..

Fraser told us an intriguing note when the stone was eventually re-assembled,

” I was interested to learn that when they dug to the bottom of the stone, they found the part underground covered with certain runic-like characters.”

These don’t appear to have been seen since.

References:

  1. Fraser, Duncan, “Meggatstane – An Incident in a Riverside Ramble,” in Border Magazine, volume 6, no.70, November 1901.
  2. Royal Commission Ancient & Historic Monuments, Scotland, An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Selkirkshire, HMSO: Edinburgh 1957.

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. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Bachilton, Methven, Perthshire

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Stone Circle (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NO 0015 2411

Also Known as:

  1. Skelfie

Archaeology & History

Sometime between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a Perthshire architect by the name of  Thomas Ross was informed by a farm-worker called John Lawson who lived at Meckphen, that a stone circle had existed at Bachilton, but which had been destroyed when he was young.  The information was gained by the great Fred Coles (1910) during his extensive survey work in and around Perthshire, but all trace of the site had gone when he came to write about it.  He told us simply:

“Many years ago, several Stones of a Circle stood here, upon what appeared to be an artificial, and quite distinct mound which is still visible.  The Stones were, however, undermined and buried, so as to be out of the reach of the plough, close to their respective sites.”

All subsequent searches for the site have proved fruitless and the circle’s long gone.

References:

  1. Coles, F.R., “Report on stone circles in Perthshire principally Strathearn,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 45, 1911.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Ossian’s Cairn, Fowlis Wester, Perthshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 88987 30186

Also Known as:

  1. Jock’s Cairn

Getting Here

Cairn on the distant peak

Make a day out for this one!  You could, of course, go barely half-a-mile straight up the hill (southwest) from Ossian’s Stone in the Sma’ Glen below – but it’s steep as fuck and I know that most of you wouldn’t do it.  So, park-up and take the gradual 3 mile walk into the mountains.  Coming via Crieff, along the A85 road east, turn left up the A822 Dunkeld road at Gilmerton.  2½ miles on, you reach the Foulford golf course on the right-hand side of the road, whilst directly across the road a dirt-track leads you into the fields, past the large Foulford cup-and-ring stone.  Keep along this track, bearing right just before Connochan Lodge and follow this dirt-track uphill on and on for another 2 miles where you’ll eventually see the cairn-peak in the distance. Another shallow track leads uphill after about 2 miles: we walked up to where the ground levels out, walked across the dodgy swamp-land and up again to the tomb. It’s well worth it!

Archaeology & History

Visible for many miles round here from the surrounding hills, this somewhat mutilated giant cairn, highlighted on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1867, hasn’t fared well in archaeology tomes.  Apart from a passing note in Margaret Stewart’s (1966) summary article on prehistoric remains in central Perthshire—where she erroneously told it to be 400 feet lower down that it actually is—almost nothing has been said of this place.  Most odd.

Cairn spoil, looking SE
New cairn atop of the old

Despite it being ransacked over the centuries, it was obviously of some considerable size in its early days.  Today, surmounting it, is a very large walker’s cairn which, no doubt, has accrued some of its own foundations from the prehistoric tomb on which it sits.  To the side of this recent cairn, another one is growing, thanks to stones brought from near and not-too-far.  But the original creation can still be seen in outline and mass all around.  Indeed, as you walk all round the modern cairn, you’re walking over much of the early collapsed stonework sleeping gently beneath the moorland vegetation, and once you walk away and below the cairn mass itself, looking back up at it you’ll notice the very ancient raised plinth of stone on which our modern one now lives.

Low walling on NW side

Its amorphous shape is somewhat amoeboid, measuring more than 22 yards across east-west, by 15 yards north-south, with a curious arc of low walling, very old indeed, on its northwestern side.  Whether this walling outlines the original edge of the tomb, only an excavation will tell.  The most notable remaining mass of ancient cairn material reaches out on its south-east to eastern edges, where some of it is beginning to fall away down the edge of the mountain slope.

Folklore

Local tradition assigns this cairn to be where the bones of the great hero-figure Ossian was removed to, when they were disturbed by the unruly mob of General Wade and his cohorts in the middle of the 18th century. Notes of the event were written at the time by one of Wade’s mob, a Captain Edward Burt, who told,

“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.”

This was essential, said Burt, as

Site shown on 1867 map
New cairn on old, looking W

“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…”

Oral tradition tells us that this cairn, high above Ossian’s Stone, is where the rites occurred.  It makes sense too.

References:

  1. Finlayson, Andrew, The Stones of Strathearn, One Tree Island: Comrie 2010.
  2. Stewart, M.E.C., “Strathtay in the Second Millenium BC“, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 92, 1961.

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. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Auchentorlie, Old Kilpatrick, Dumbartonshire

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Cup-and-Ring Stones (lost):  OS Grid Reference – NS 444 747

Archaeology & History

A couple of interesting multiple-ringed carvings were found high up on the slopes above Bowling, not far from the Bow Linn waterfalls, near the end of the 19th century.  John Bruce (1893) told that, shortly after the discovery of the Cochno carvings,

“in the year 1889, two cup and ring marked stones were discovered in a dyke near the old farmhouse of Auchentorlie while the reservoir for the district water supply was being excavated close by.”

But since then, they seem to have disappeared.  Searches for them by the old petroglyph writer Ron Morris in the 1960s and the Royal Commission lads in the 1970s both drew a blank.  If we’re lucky, they might be hiding in a box somewhere, in the storage rooms of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum.  As you can from the sketches done by W.A. Donnelly, they’re quite impressive.  The drawings give the impression that they were small portable carvings, which may suggest they were once part of a prehistoric cist or cairn, although no such site has been found in this locale.  If this isn’t the case, their small size is an oddity.

References:

  1. Bruce, John, The History of the Parish of West or Old Kilpatrick,  John Smith: Glasgow 1893.
  2. Morris, Ronald W.B. & Bailey, Douglas C., “The Cup-and-Ring Marks and Similar Sculptures of Southwestern Scotland: A Survey,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 98, 1966.
  3. Royal Commission Ancient Historical Monuments, Scotland, The Archaeological Sites and Monuments of Dumbarton District…, HMSO: Edinburgh 1978.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Dumbuck Hill, Milton, Dumbarton, Dumbartonshire

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Cup-Marked Stone (lost):  OS Grid Reference – NS 419 747

Archaeology & History

Very little is known of this site.  It was discovered in the 1890s by a Mr W.A. Donnelly who was responsible for some of the early drawings of the famous Cochno Stone carving (found a few miles east of here), but it seems that he made no such sketch of this particular carving—although it doesn’t sound too impressive when we compare it to some of the others in this area.  It was thankfully mentioned, albeit briefly by John Bruce (1893), who told that it was “a boulder with a large basin and a duct heading therefrom…at the foot of Dumbuck Hill.”  The carving may well have been destroyed by quarrying.

References:

  1. Bruce, John, The History of the Parish of West or Old Kilpatrick,  John Smith: Glasgow 1893.
  2. Morris, Ronald W.B. & Bailey, Douglas C., “The Cup-and-Ring Marks and Similar Sculptures of Southwestern Scotland: A Survey,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 98, 1966.
  3. Royal Commission Ancient Historical Monuments, Scotland, The Archaeological Sites and Monuments of Dumbarton District…, HMSO: Edinburgh 1978.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Dunarbuck, Old Kilpatrick, Dumbartonshire

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Cup-Marked Stone (lost):  OS Grid Reference – NS 449 740

Also Known as:

  1. Dunerbuck
  2. Greenland (5)

Archaeology & History

Bruce’s 1893 sketch

This small and visually trivial cup-marked stone is one of a number in this neck o’ the woods that have either been destroyed or simply lost.  This stone has the “lost” label stamped on it!  It was first described in John Bruce’s (1893) classic local history work where he told it to be “a boulder of sandstone with three cup-marks…(that) lies on the slope of the Hill of Dun, about 100 yards north of Dunerbuck  farmhouse.”  It doesn’t appear to have been seen since, as none of the classic petroglyph writers described seeing it and a search for it in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum in the 1960s drew a blank.  The carving has subsequently been added to archaeological inventories with the standard, “this cup-marked boulder cannot now be located.”  It may yet be found, overgrown by grasses and mosses, just that hundred yards or so above the buildings behind Dunarbuck.  That entire area needs scanning to be honest…

References:

  1. Bruce, John, The History of the Parish of West or Old Kilpatrick,  John Smith: Glasgow 1893.
  2. Bruce, John, “Notice of Remarkable Groups of Archaic Sculpturings in Dumbartonshire and Stirlingshire,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, volume 30, 1896.
  3. Royal Commission Ancient Historic Monuments, Scotland, The Archaeological Sites and Monuments of Dumbarton District…, HMSO: Edinburgh 1978.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Foulford, Fowlis Wester, Perthshire

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Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NN 89986 26994

Also Known as:

  1. Connachan Lodge

Getting Here

The old stone in his field

Take the A85 road east out of Crieff and after roughly 2 miles at Gilmerton, turn left up the A822 Dunkeld road.  Go along here for nearly 2½ miles, where you’ll reach the Foulford golf course on the right-hand side of the road.  Directly opposite the entrance into the golf course, a dirt-track leads you into the fields where, laying alone and standing out like a sore thumb about 300 yards away, you’ll see a large rounded boulder sitting there minding it’s own business.  You can see it quite clearly from the roadside.  Nice n’ easy.

Archaeology & History

For such a large conspicuous stone, you’d think there’d be quite a lot written about it as well as hope for a good ornate design—but alas!, both hopeful expectations are lacking.  Although, as usual, there’s more to it than is described in the official records—although not much more….

Long stone & its  cupmarks
Cups along the spine

As you walk towards it, it seems as if a rounded earthfast boulder is in front of you, but once you reach it you realise that it’s nothing of the sort.  Indeed, the more you looked at the stone, the more it seems as if it might have stood upright not too many centuries ago; the prevalence of other standing stones in the area being well known.  But, along the spine of this long stone, a number of cup-marks speak out to you: at least seven of them, perhaps eight.  There are a number of smaller “cups” roughly along the same length of stone, but these are Nature’s handiwork; but, it looks as if one or two of the man-made cups might have started their lives as Nature’s indentations and been worked into the symbols that still remain to this day.

Faint ring around a cup
Nose of stone, looking E

The official records tell us of the cup-marks, but says nothing of the faint but distinct rings around two or three of the cups.  The most notable one, albeit faint, is near the southeastern part of the stone, where the ring seems to be an artistic partnership of Nature and man.  You can make it out in the photo, albeit not too clearly.   Nearer to the middle of the stone at least one of the cups has a semi-circle around it and, just to the side of it, a natural crack in the stone has been enhanced and carved into a short line.  On the whole, it’s not a visually impressive carving and the design is troublesome to see if the lighting isn’t right (as usual), but is worth having a look at if you’re in the area.  Very little’s been written about it apart from brief notes in the regional megalithic surveys of both Finlayson (2010) and Watson (2006).

References: 

  1. Finlayson, Andrew, The Stones of Strathearn, One Tree Island: Comrie 2010.
  2. Watson, David, A Simple Introduction to the Stone Circles and Standing Stones of Perthshire, Photoprint 2006.

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. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Stroness (1), Fowlis Wester, Perthshire

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Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NN 91981 26817

Also Known as:

  1. Buchanty Hill

Getting Here

The stone in its setting

Take the same direction as if you’re visiting the Ardoch (2) carving, starting from the Foulford golf course on the A822, roughly halfway between Gilmerton and the entrance to the Sma’ Glen.  From here, take the track eastwards into the hills and literally ¾-mile along you reach the pylon; keep going along the same track for another 200 yards and on your left watch out for the track-cum-footpath going up the slope past Ardoch (2), onto the hilltop, then through the gate and down the path northeast for about ⅔-mile until you reach the burn. Keep going uphill for 80 yards and through the cronky gate, head 70 yards to your left to the large single rounded boulder.

Archaeology & History

Main scatter of cups

One of several petroglyphs in the area, this is the most notable in terms of its size.  It rests just below the two Stroness hut circles which sit on the small level piece of ground nearly 100 yards further up the slope.  A considerable scatter of cup-marks cover much of the upper surface of the boulder, some faint, some not so faint, with a number of them painted in a slight cover of lichens at the topmost section of the rock.  The carving was first described somewhat blandly by George Currie (2004), who simply wrote:

“Large boulder, 2 x 2m, just W of hut circles; 16+ cups, 40–50 x 14–20mm.”

Faint line near the edge
Cups among the lichens

It’s actually south of the hut circles; and there are certainly more than sixteen cup-marks, as the photos here indicate.  At the time of my visit here recently, the sun was falling and was just below the level that permitted a perfect highlighting of the cup-marks, but there seemed to be at least 25 of them, scattered in no particular order over much of its upper surface.  One curiosity that seemed apparent was a long carved line running along a long slender edge along on the southern side of the stone, from a large cup-mark down to near the southwestern edge, meeting another smaller cupmark.  I not 100% certain that it’s actually been carved and it may just be one of Nature’s scratches along the rock, but it does seem to have that “man-made” stamp on it.  Another visit in differing light will show us one way or the other.

References:

  1. Currie, George, ‘Buchanty Hill (Fowlis Wester parish): Cup-marked Rocks’, in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, volume 5, 2004.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Stroness, Fowlis Wester, Perthshire

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Hut Circles:  OS Grid Reference – NN 9201 2689

Getting Here

Overgrown outline of hut

If you’re coming here you’re obviously making a day out of it!  You’ll be taking the shortest route to the Ardoch (2) petroglyph, via the Foulford golf course along the A822, roughly halfway between Gilmerton and the entrance to the Sma’ Glen.  From here, take the track eastwards into the hills, and literally ¾-mile along you reach the pylon; keep along the same track for another 200 yards and on your left watch out for the track-cum-footpath going up the slope past the petroglyph, onto the hilltop, then through the gate and down the path for about ⅔-mile until you reach the burn.  On the other side, go through the gate and 100 yards uphill through another one, walk immediately to your left alongside the fence.  About 20 yards from the wall, look at the ground.  Zigzag about!

Archaeology & History

Two distinct but very overgrown hut circles sit next to each other on the first ridge above the burn.  When they were first built—sometime in the Bronze Age most likely—the landscape here was slightly different to what we see today. Scattered woodland of hazel, birch and Scots pine lived all across these hills and the small burn 100 yards below would have been much faster flowing, with trout and smaller fish in plentiful supply.  The large cup-marked stone between the burn and these huts would have had some magico-religious meaning to the people living here.  Indeed, it may have been carved by the people who built the huts, or they might have rested here due to its presence. I point out these simple ingredients to give a little more life to a site which, today, seems so isolated, lonely and unimpressive.  It’s essential that we paint the history of this and all our ancient monuments with the colourful shades they lived within: of the forests and their animals, so as to give these seemingly bland lifeless remains a feeling in order to rekindle their history.

Apart from the large petroglyph less than 100 yards below, these hut circle are apparently in isolation if we go by the record books.  And they’re difficult to make out when the grasses are tall—as they were when I visited recently.  They are both roughly the same size—about 11 yards across—and, most likely, each housed a small family.  The one closest to the wall is the slightly smaller of the two.  It was first reported by Miss Comrie (1972) who initially only noticed one of the two huts—probably due to the long grasses.  She told that,

“On an area known as Buchanty Hill at 1000ft is a hut circle with a diameter of 11mand wall width of 2m.  Situated in a hollow, sheltered from the north and with an entrance on the downward-side facing south.  The walling has no obvious inner or outer facing.”

On my visit to this place, the silence was deafening and the fading daylight painted the hills with a stunning velvet breath all across the veil of Her body.  It’s a gorgeous isolated place that you might aswell sit down with after you’ve finished looking at the rock art…

References:

  1. Comrie, J.E.M., “Fowlis Wester Parish: Hut Circle,” in Discovery & Excavation, Scotland, 1972.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

The Dhuine, Farr, Sutherland

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Broch (ruins):  OS Grid Reference – NC 7175 6338

Getting Here

Remains above roadside

From Bettyhill village, take the A836 road east (as if you’re heading towards Thurso) for literally 1½ miles (2.4km) and take the left turn to Farr (signposted).  Exactly a mile along, just past the gated house above the road on your right, in the sloping field below it, you’ll notice a seemingly innocuous scatter of stones doing nothing in particular in the grassland.  That’s it!

Archaeology & History

There’s not too much to look at here, apart from a very overgrown mass of loose stones seemingly piled up near the bottom of the sloping hillside.  It was first noted when James Horsburgh (1870) explored the prehistoric sites of the region, but even then the site was mentioned with some brevity, telling simply:

“On the way from Farr to Borve Castle, there are the foundations of a Pictish tower at Clarkhill, the stones of which are larger than usual, being square blocks.”

Looking down on the ruins

His description regarding its precise whereabouts wasn’t very clear, but it was located some years later by the Royal Commission (1911) who subsequently added the site to their Inventory.  They found that the broch was “at the extreme west end of a low rocky ridge on which are situated the buildings of a croft bearing the name of The Dun.”  They reported, even then, that only a few large stones of the broch remained visible.  `

The site was included in Euan Mackie’s (2007) magnum opus, where he described the only remains left of this “possible broch” to be “the basal course of the outer wall…forming an arc about 9.0m long.”

References:

  1. Horsburgh, James, “Notes of Cromlechs, Duns, Hut-circles, Chambered Cairns and other Remains, in the County of Sutherland“, in Proceedings Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 7, 1870. 
  2. MacKie, E W., The Roundhouses, Brochs and Wheelhouses of Atlantic Scotland c.700 BC-AD 500 – volume 2, British Archaeological Report: Oxford 2007.
  3. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Second Report and Inventory of Monuments & Constructions in the County of Sutherland. HMSO: Edinburgh 1911.

Acknowledgements:  With thanks to the old crew of Aisha and her little Lara for getting me up here, oh so many years ago now…..

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian