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Field Visit
Date 24 June 1999
Event ID 635080
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/635080
The site of this recumbent stone circle lies in an improved field on the low rounded hill to the WNW of Bankhead. Probably largely intact until the beginning of the 19th century, it was then cleared away and all that remained by 1866 were a number of large boulders incorporated into a stone dyke, including the lower section of the recumbent. The first description of circle, however, written about 1842, was transposed by its author onto another site nearby (see below), and the details of its composition and character, and indeed of the number of circles in the neighbourhood of Clatt, have been shrouded in confusion ever since. Assuming that this description is now correctly correlated with Bankhead, the circle comprised the recumbent setting and at least seven orthostats, measuring some 23m in diameter and enclosing a cairn up to 0.9m high within the interior. The dyke incorporating the remaining stones has also been removed now and since about 1981 the surviving fragment of the recumbent has lain with three other large boulders on the W side of a pond to the S of the farmhouse (NJ 53287 26784). Lying on its back, the recumbent (2) is a roughly trapezoidal block in plan measuring 3m in length. The summit of the stone has been cut and blasted away to form its jagged SW face, and at least two shot-holes and several wedge marks are preserved in the fractured edge. The other three stones here come from elsewhere on the farm.
Visited by RCAHMS (ATW and KHJM) 24 June 1999
