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Field Visit

Date 31 March 2004

Event ID 635074

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/635074

The remains of this recumbent stone circle are situated on the SE slopes of Knapperty Hill, which is better known for the Knapperty Hillock long cairn lying some 220m to the WNW; indeed the site of the circle falls roughly on the projected axis of the long cairn. Formerly comprising a ring of nine stones some 15m across (Peter 1885, 373–4; Coles 1904, 273–4), it has been severely mauled; the recumbent setting is now subsumed into a pile of boulders heaped up at the edge of a field and only one other orthostat remains in place (4). The recumbent block (2), which probably had a relatively even top, lies shattered into at least three pieces on the SW of the ring, and W flanker (1) is fallen, lying beneath one end of what is probably a displaced orthostat (A). The E flanker (3), however, is still in place, standing about 2.4m high in the line of the field dyke immediately to the SE. It is also the more slender of the two, set flush with the front of the recumbent and projecting the long axis of the setting. At the rear of the setting, three earthfast boulders can be seen, one adjacent to the fallen W flanker and two immediately behind the E flanker; measuring up to 1m in height, those on the E clearly forge a link with the E corner of the recumbent, indicating that they are probably kerbstones belonging to a ring-bank or an internal cairn (below). Many of the boulders built into the adjacent dyke were probably cleared from this and one of them, set in the ground on the SW side of a gateway to the NE, bears a single cupmark measuring 50mm in diameter and up to 20mm in depth.

Visited by RCAHMS (ATW and KHJM) 31 March 2004

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