Field Visit

Date 10 July 2018

Event ID 1041426

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1041426

HES Special Survey 2018

This stone circle was re-surveyed by history students from the University of North Alabama under the supervision of HES. Several new features, including an internal cairn, were noted for the first time.

The ring is situated in improved pasture on a low ridge within open parkland, about 135m WSW of Kinnell House. It measures 9.2m from NE to SW by 8.7m transversely and comprises 6 orthostats. These are roughly graded in height, with the tallest on the WSW (1) measuring 1.97m high, while the shortest on the NE (4) measures 1.35m high. However, the WSW orthostat has been raised from a slumped position since 1909 and those on the S (6) and ESE (5) are only a few centimetres shorter. Each is a natural schist slab, but the fabric of that on the WSW is notable for quartz veining and numerous small garnets. Three small cup marks are situated on the upper section of the inner face of the N orthostat (3). Packing stones are visible at the foot of the external face of at least three of the orthostats (3, 4, 5), but the internal faces of each closely circumscribes the disturbed cairn which occupies the interior of the ring.

There is little doubt that this stone circle is one of the ‘Druidical temples’ that the Reverend Colin Maclean noted in the parish in the late 18th century (Maclean 1796, 466); and it probably owes its’ survival to the fact that it was during this period that such antiquities were often perceived by the gentry as a cultural asset to their estates (Stevenson 1985, 140). Although the Reverend Hugh Macmillan misconstrued the number of orthostats in the late 19th century, he identified the presence of the ‘few faint cup-marks’ (Macmillan 1884, 373-4). Coles, who was greatly impressed by this example of ‘megalithic craft’, prepared a detailed plan and sketches in which the WSW orthostat is shown leaning steeply N (Coles 1910, 130-2). Although he failed to notice the ring’s stony interior, he observed that the orthostats did not all fall on the circumference of a circle - an observation that was reinforced by the survey taken by Professor Alexander Thom on 6 April 1955 (MS/430/21). Thom, who recorded that the WSW orthostat had been raised, classified its’ shape variously as a ‘definite ellipse’ or a ‘Type B flattened circle’ (Thom 1967, 72, 139 (P 1/3); Thom, Thom and Burl 1980, 330-1). Using his figures, Burl initially construed the difference between the axes as 1.6m (Burl 1976, 363; Thom, Thom and Burl 1980, 331), whereas RCAHMS, in accepting it as a flattened circle, evaluated it as 1m (RCAHMS 1979, 16). Although the footings of the WSW orthostat are unlikely to have been interfered with when it was raised, an emphasis on the measurement of the long axis for classification could be misplaced. The intention may have been simply to accentuate the orientation. Burl was almost certainly correct to seek its analogues amongst the 6-stone rings of Central and NE Scotland (Burl 1976, 190, 192; 2000, 244).

Visited by HES (ECB, AMcC, ATW), 10 July 2018