Field Visit
Date September 1976
Event ID 1123929
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1123929
NS 952 405. Ritual Enclosure (probable), Blackshouse Burn. One of the strangest monuments in Lanarkshire is situated on open moorland 2.5 km N of Thankerton, within the natural amphitheatre formed by the Cairngryffe, Swaites and Chester Hills. It consists of a bank 11m thick which encloses a roughly circular area of about 6.5 ha (16 acres), and which has clearly been sited to include the twin heads of the Blackshouse Burn, one of the tributaries of the Glade Burn. The position has no defensive value, and examination of the bank by the Commission's officers in 1976* showed that it had consisted largely of stones, heaped together with only a small amount of earth and rock rubble. Because the stone content had included a high proportion of sandstone slabs, the bank has been heavily robbed and is nowhere more than 1.2m high at the present time. Throughout its entire length it is disfigured by quarry-scoops, while piles of small stones discarded by the robbers overlie the remains of the bank for a distance of about 110m on the WNW. There is no trace of a ditch, nor any certain indications of an entrance, and the interior, which falls slightly on the SE but is otherwise more or less level, exhibits no sign of structures.
In the 18th century it was reported that some 'urns' had been found 'under the ruins of the wall, a great many years ago by some people that were digging out the larger stones, for the purpose of building. They were each of them enclosed within four coarse flag stones, set on edge, and covered with one laid flat. The space included by these flags was filled to a considerable depth, with a fine whitish sand, among which the urn was standing in an inverted position. Upon removing the urn, something of a soft slimy nature was found upon the sand, which, probably might be the ashes of human bones' (Stat. Acct., xii (1794), 39-40; ibid. (reissue), vii (1973), 552-3). This appears to have been a small cinerary urn cemetery, with each burial deposit protected by a setting of stones (cf. ). If this monument, whose affinities are discussed in the Introduction (RCAHMS 1978, 4) is indeed a Late Neolithic or Bronze Age ritual enclosure, it is likely that the burials did not in fact antedate the construction of the bank but were subsequently inserted into it.
Immediately outside the bank on the WNW there is a small sub-circular enclosure of uncertain purpose. It measures about 40m in diameter within a stony bank averaging 8.5m in thickness and up to 0.7m high; this bank also has been severely robbed. A gap on the SE may represent an original entrance.
RCAHMS 1978, visited September 1976
