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.
Just as you’re coming into Balnaguard village on the B898 road from the eastern side (as if you’ve come via the A9 from near Pitlochry), just where the road crosses a small burn (stream), take the first farm-track on your right and walk down to the end where it meets the field. Here, walk to your left left and you’ll see a gate that takes you into the field. You should have already noticed the standing stone before you even open the gate! It’s about 100 yards in front of you. You can’t really miss it.
Archaeology & History
Clach na Croiche
Standing alone in this field a short distance south of the River Tay is this fine old standing stone, nearly seven feet high, from whose locale we gaze west to the opening of the Perthshire mountains—but in times gone by it wasn’t alone. Less than 10 yards east of the Clach na Croiche stood another seven-foot tall standing stone and, some six yards further east (and along the same axis) there may have stood another one, some 7½ feet high. This alignment ran east-west in line with the rising and setting of the sun at the equinoxes. (whether that was deliberate or not is another matter altogether) and was first noticed by the great antiquarian Fred Coles (1904) in one of his many megalithic ventures. He wondered “whether they (were) fallen Standing Stones, or the covers of cists” and when they were looked at by Margaret Stewart in 1971 she found that one of them laid beside “a shallow socket outlined with packing stones”—meaning that it had stood upright. The other stone didn’t seem as certain, although Stewart did report finding “a single cupmark…on the eastern side of the upper surface.” We’ve yet to see a photo of this carving.
The Clach na Croiche also has its own cup-markings, just above the bottom of the stone on its southern-face. Margaret Stewart described them as being “strung out irregularly across the face.” Sounds about right! Sadly, somehow, I didn’t get any photos of these when I last visited, but will grab some the next time I’m there.
Looking to the westLooking to the northeast
In the fields either side of the stones, ancient tombs have been found. Around 1887, the Duke of Atholl dug under some of the stones in the field and found a “cup” or urn which Coles reported “was found in a cist in the haugh near Tom-na-Croiche.” Then, in 1969, the farmer John MacBeth was ploughing the field and unearthed another cist some 15 yards north-west of the present upright. The base of the cist was cobbled and whilst whilst the tomb itself was filled-in, the farmer moved the covering stone to the fence at the west-side of the field (NN 9455 5205). Also, on the eastern side of the field in 1971, Stewart reported finding what she thought were the remains of cremated bones that seemed to have been part of another prehistoric structure.
Fred Cole’s 1904 sketchLooking to the southeast
Nearly 250 yards to the west of the stone, in the adjacent field, a huge prehistoric cairn—known as the Sketewan Cairn—was uncovered and fully excavated in the late 1980s. It originally stood some four feet high and was nearly seventy feet across. Within the cairn complex, a small standing stone accompanied some cremations. Unfortunately this entire archaeological site has since been completely covered over. You wouldn’t even know it was there if you stood right next to it! But if you want to see Balnaguard’s remaining tombs, head for the Fairy Mound right in the heart of the village…
Dixon, John H., Pitlochry, Past and Present, L. Mackay: Pitlochry 1925.
Kennedy, James, Folklore and Reminiscences of Strathtay and Grandtully, Munro Press: Perth 1927.
Omand, Donald (ed.), The Perthshire Book, Birlinn: Edinburgh 1999.
Stevenson, J., “Prehistory,” in Omand’s The Perthshire Book, Edinburgh 1999.
Stewart, Margaret E.C., “Perthshire: Balnaguard”, in Discovery & Excavation in Scotland, 1971.
Swarbrick, Olaf, A Gazetteer of Prehistoric Standing Stones in Great Britain, BAR: Oxford 2012.
Yellowlees, Sonia, Cupmarked Stones in Strathtay, Scotland Magazine: Edinburgh 2004.
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.
Cup-Marked Stone (destroyed?): OS Grid Reference – NN 8575 4901
Also Known as:
Clachmore
Archaeology & History
The Clach Mhor, or the Big Stone, is all but forgotten as an antiquarian relic in Aberfeldy. It’s history is somewhat piecemeal. First described in Hugh MacMillan (1884)’s essay on local cup-and-ring stones, he told that:
“A short distance above the village of Aberfeldy, where General Wade’s old road emerges from the houses, a huge stone, called the Clach Mhor, lies on the left-hand side in a slanting position half erect, as if supported by the garden wall of which it forms a part. …In all likelihood it originally stood erect, and formed one of a group of similar stones, its companions having been broken up in the formation of the road. …On the upper face there are some small cup-markings, not quite so well formed as usual, owing to the hardness of the material… The fact that they occur on only one side of the stone, and are scattered indiscriminately all over its surface, are sufficient to convince any one who is skilled in the subject that they are genuine specimens of prehistoric sculpture.”
Nearly thirty years after this initial description, MacMillan (1901) found that it had previously been a part of The Tullich stone circle, and following its destruction the Clach Mhor was moved and used as “part of a garden wall on the old military road passing along its base.”
More than fifty years later, the Aberfeldy historian N.D. Mackay (1954) told that up to 1910 the Clach Mhor was a conspicuous object, standing “as it were overlooking and to some extent overhanging the roadway down near the Square.” However, it
“was blasted and broken up in 1910 in the course of road widening operations, but a considable part of it was built into, and still forms the lower corner of, the garden boundary wall, nearest The Square, of the house which bears its name, ‘Clachmhor’. Its present position is slightly east of the site it occupied when I first knew it and, unless Wade’s men did actually move it, the site it occupied for centuries.”
Mackay also mentioned what he called the “indentations” on the stone which MacMillam deemed as cup-marks, but he pointed out that one Rev. John MacLean “believed they were made by the levers, jacks, etc, of (General) Wade’s men” when they cut the road into Aberfeldy in the 18th century, whilst
“A third solution was given by the son of a one-time local strong man called Big Robert, “What a strong man my father was,” he said, “he lifted that stone. Don’t you see the marks of his fingers on it?””
It’s not known what became of the Clach Mhor and whether it remains hiding in some walling, or whether it has met its demise….
References:
Mackay, N.D., Aberfeldy Past and Present, Town Council: Aberfeldy 1954.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NN 857 489
Archaeology & History
In an early essay on the rock art around Aberfeldy, Hugh MacMillan (1884) remarked on what he thought was a tumulus on the southern slope above the town and where a large old petroglyph once lived. Subsequently (MacMillan 1901), in his beautiful artistic foray through upper Tayside, he revised his earlier remarks telling that:
“On the side of a high, tree-covered hillock, rising up abruptly behind the central part of Aberfeldy, called the Tullich, there was once a Druidical circle, one of the huge stones of which, called the Clachmore, forms part of a garden wall on the old military road passing along its base.”
The circle was mentioned in Mackay’s (1954) excellent work, albeit in the past tense, and he could add no more to it other than his memory of the whereabouts of the Clach Mhor (as it was more accurately known), on which were numerous cup-markings. (Note: the grid-reference to this site is an approximation)
Folklore
In bygone times the people of Aberfeldy observed the celebration of Samhain, the old pre-christian New Year’s Day—a.k.a. Hallowe’en—on November 11th. Interestingly for us, “bonfires were numerous and there was always a great blaze on the Tullich,” said Dr John Kennedy. (1901) Considering the small area of The Tullich, it would be unusual if such festivities did not have some relationship with the stone circle. Samhain relates primarily to the passing over of the dead in the cycle of the year: the spirits of the ancestors moving through the worlds. If this circle had such a relationship with the bonfires, it may have been a ring cairn and not a free-standing stone circle.
References:
Kennedy, John, Old Highland Days, Religious Tract Society 1901.
Mackay, N.D., Aberfeldy Past and Present, Town Council: Aberfeldy 1954.
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.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NX 681 450
Archaeology & History
In an area that’s littered with prehistoric rock art, this “stone circle” at Knockshinne—listed in Burl’s (2000) magnum opus—is a debatable entry that was described in one of Fred Coles’ (1895) many articles on such matters. When he came here he told how to the west,
“of Balmae House, and near the base of Knockshinnie, four stones in situ, all, I think, granite, and the sites of six others as distinctly observable…. A massive stone lies outside the circle on the south. Diameter 72 feet.”
Subsequent visits to the same spot by the Royal Commission (1914) gave a somewhat different interpretation to that suggested by Coles. They told us that,
“This setting of stones, noted elsewhere as a stone circle, lies on rough pasture some 100 yards below the road passing to the south-west of Knockshinnie, and about ¼ mile west-north-west of Balmae. It consists of four granite blocks, the highest standing about li feet above ground, placed on an arc with a chord of 76 feet and radius at centre of 21 feet. The stones are placed at irregular distances on a sloping bank, so that the lowest stone is at 8 feet lower elevation than the upper one. Other two displaced boulders and a number of smaller stones lie in a heap to the north-west, and the beds of stones which have been removed from the setting are visible. Though the boulders have been placed in position by man’s hand, it is doubtful if they have ever been part of a stone circle, and from their situation on a slope below a plateau it is probable that they represent the line of an old dyke.”
By the 1970s, all that remained here was a line of three stones, but these have subsequently been removed or destroyed. Modern archaeological interpretation goes against Burl (2000) and Coles, suggesting that the stones were more likely part of an ancient dyke.
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.
Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments & Constructions of Scotland, Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in Galloway – volume 2: County of the Stewatry of Kirkcudbrightshire , HMSO: Edinburgh 1914.
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 – NY 549 182
Archaeology & History
This site has been completely destroyed by the huge eyesore of a quarry that we all see when we’re travelling up the M6 north, above Shap. John Waterhouse (1985) told that “a rescue excavation” was carried out here with help from the kids at Penrith Queen Elizabeth School, shortly before its destruction in 1952, but now there is no trace left of it. When it was first described by J.E. Spence (1935), the circle had already been damaged by a wall that cut right through its centre. He told:
Spence’s 1935 plan
“The circle, which is 6o feet in diameter, is composed of 35 stones, 20 being on the west and 15 on the east side of the boundary wall running through the circle from north to south. The stones of which the circle is composed are Borrowdale erratics, a large number of which are scattered over the adjoining ground on both sides of the wall but more thickly in Sweet Holme Pasture. The stones, which vary up to 5 feet 9 inches by 3 feet, are larger and more numerous in the north-west quadrant where the tallest stands 1 foot 8 inches above the level of the turf. The ground within the circle is level, but to the south and west it slopes gently down from the edge of the circle in such a manner as to suggest that the area within the circle has been levelled.”
1952 plan laid over Spence’s 1935 plan
Spence told that an ancient “sunken trackway” led outwards from the circle to the south-west in the direction of Rosgill, but when the 1952 excavation occurred, no remains of such a track were found; nor was the wall that had cut through it; and the north-easterly section of the circle had been cut into and re-laid, presumably by the quarrymen. It was quite plain, wrote G.G. Sieveking (1984), “that this portion of the monument was encroached upon in the summer of 1952, and hastily reconstructed for the benefit of the archaeologists.”
Their excavation found that some internal sections of this ring had been paved with thin limestone slabs and they also uncovered two small cairns, neither of which possessed anything. However, they did find four funerary deposits within the monument: one at the northeastern section of the circle (no.1); another near the centre (no.4); and remains of a cremation west of centre (no.3); but the most complete find was at the western side of the ring, where a “disarticulated inhumation burial was lying immediately beneath the turf line in a shallow grave 1.35 m long, surrounded by a setting of small boulders.” It was a near complete human skeleton. This place was obviously, at times, used in ceremonies for the dead.
Shortly after the archaeological examination of the site, it was blasted away by quarrying. Gone!
References:
Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of Britain– volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1989.
Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
Farrah, Robert W.E., A Guide to the Stone Circles of Cumbria, Hayloft: Kirkby Stephen 2008.
Seton, Ray, The Reason for the Stone Circles in Cumbria, privately published: Morecambe 1995
Sieveking, G.G., “Excavation of a Stone Circle at Wilson Scar, Shap North 1952,” in Transactions Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, volume 84, 1984.
Spence, J.E., “A Stone Circle in Shap Rural Parish,” in Transactions Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, volume 35, 1935.
Waterhouse, John, The Stone Circles of Cumbria, Phillimore: Chichester 1985.
