Field Visit
Date June 1984
Event ID 1048452
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1048452
This site lies 100m W of Daltote Cottage in a valley which is bounded to E and W by low sheer-sided ridges, and slopes gently SSW for 400m to the E shore of Loch Sween. The area was already thickly wooded in the 19th century, and until 1982-3 was occupied by a mature conifer plantation. Following the felling of these trees, a forest road was constructed in 1984 to a point about 20m N of the site. An old road or track shown on the 19th century Ordnance Survey map, which passed immediately W of the site, appears from its regular alignment to have been associated with estate woodland-management at that period. The traditional site of another burial ground lies 0.7km to the NNE, while the remains of the old settlement of Daltote are obscured by dense plantations 400m to the SSE (NR 747829).
The site is bounded to the E by a low rock-face, against which was formed a rounded enclosure measuring about 10m from NNE to SSW by 8.5m within a rubble wall up to 2m thick. These remains were recorded in 1962 and 1973, but at the date of visit the S wall has been obliterated by recent timber-clearance operations. There are also no remains of the well and possible gravemarkers described by previous observers, but a vertically-bedded slab of chlorite-schist about 1.3m high bears on its W face a handled cross of Early Christian character.
The cross is of equal-armed type and is carved in false relief within a circle 0.51m in diameter whose central compass-point is marked by a slight depression. The whole area within the circle has been slightly sunk, although this is now obscured by flaking at the top of the right edge, and the armpits and the centres of the arms of the cross have been more deeply recessed so that its outline is defined by flat bands about 60mm wide. The arms are slightly curved at the sides but not at the ends, which merge into a circular frame about 30mm wide. The base of the enclosing circle is interrupted by a handle or pedestal 0.17m in height, with curved sides and sunken centre; this handle, like the axis of the cross itself, is tilted just a few degrees from the vertical.
RCAHMS 1992, visited June 1984
