Druidstone, Druidsfield

RCAHMS surveyed the remains of Druidfield recumbent stone circle on 26 October 1998 with plane-table and alidade at a scale of 1:100. The survey drawing was checked on-site on 30 March 2000. The resultant plan was redrawn in vector graphics software and published at a scale of 1:250 (Welfare 2011, 513).

90m north-east of Druidsfield. Set 4.6m apart, the western stands 2.2m in height, the eastern 2m. In 1866–7 they were pointed out to OS surveyors as the remains of a stone circle (Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 88, p 90), though this may have been based on the understanding on the part of their informants – John Innes, an Inspector of Poor, James Leslie, a miller, and George Clerihew of Sylavethy – that this was the site of the Druidical temple described in the New Statistical Account (xii, Aberdeenshire, 449–50); in this they were mistaken, for that description almost certainly refers to a hut-circle some 1.2km to the north-east at Crookmore (see discussion under NJ51NE 16 and 144). In part the history of this misunderstanding can be inferred from the causeway depicted on the 1st edition OS map leading off to the north-east from the two stones at Druidsfield, though it evidently concerned the surveyors that the New Statistical Account entry indicated that this feature should have led south-east: ‘Although stated here to lead in a “Southeast direction” no information can be obtained now to that effect, nor has any vestige been seen within the memory of the oldest living inhabitant in the neighbourhood to indicate its course in that direction, but it is believed to have gone in the direction of another “Stone Circle” which shows it leading in a Northeast direction’ (Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 88, p 85). In popular imagination, or at least in the mind of John Innes, who was also one of the informants for Crookmore, the tradition of a roadway leading somewhere from the Druidical temple described in the New Statistical Account seems to have required another Druidical monument at its other end (cf Druidstone, Premnay). Thus, the circle at Crookmore and the two stones at Druidsfield had not only become intertwined in local lore, but the description in the New Statistical Account had been transposed to the opposite end of the road that supposedly linked them, probably for no other reason than that the two stones continued to be a local landmark, whereas Crookmore had disappeared. The alignment of the causeway on the map was duly achieved with a ruler drawn between Druidsfield and the site of the circle the surveyors had previously plotted at Crookmore. The identification of the Druidsfield stones as the remains of a recumbent stone circle can be attributed to Coles and it has consistently appeared in the lists of these monuments ever since (Burl 1970, 78; 1976a, 351, Abn 42; 1979a, 23; 2000, 420, Abn 41; Barnatt 1989, 280, no. 6:33; Ruggles 1984, 59; 1999, 187, no. 52). Coles recorded the two stones in 1900 and was immediately struck by their resemblance to a pair of flankers. He picked up a local story that a recumbent had been removed in 1830, which was confirmed to him by the tenant, Adam Moir, who wrote: ‘There was a stone which lay between the two Standing Stones. I am certain of that. I do not remember ever hearing how many stones more were in the circle. It is quite true that the stone which lay on its side between the two Standing Stones was removed and put in the bank of the Don; and it remains there yet; it was never replaced’ (Coles 1901, 210). At face value, the case that the Druidsfield stones formed part of a recumbent setting is unequivocal, but in the light of the confusion between Druidsfield and Crookmore that already existed in the 1860s, the local memory that also told Coles some 40 years later that this had been a ‘fine circle well known, not so many years ago, to the local residents’ (ibid), should be treated more circumspectly. This has all the ingredients of a story that has grown in the telling, and we should be wary that the recumbent was said to have been removed in 1830, almost exactly the same date at which the monument at Crookmore was demolished. The supposed recumbent in the bank of the Don has never been identified.