Rapplaburn

The site of a Stone Circle on the slope west of the Rapplaburn steading is annotated on the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Aberdeenshire 1873, xxviii), but by then it had been reduced to no more than ‘a pile of large stones supposed to be the remains of a Druidical Circle’ (Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 7, p 76). Five stones were present in 1902, at which time Coles drew attention to the largest and suggested that it might have been a recumbent (1903a, 106). Measuring about 2.4m by 1.5m and 0.9m in thickness, it was evidently much larger than the others, but all five have since been removed and unfortunately they escaped James Ritchie’s camera. For this reason the circle has received only qualified acceptance in some lists of recumbent stone circles (Burl 1976a, 353, Abn 91; Ruggles 1984, 59; 1999, 186, no. 21), but has been rejected in others (Barnatt 1989, 487, no. 6:hh). It has now dropped out of Burl’s gazetteer altogether (2000). There the matter must rest until such times that further work on the ground reveals new evidence.