Field Visit
Date 7 June 1999 - 8 June 1999
Event ID 635149
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/635149
Now reduced to little more than a heavily quarried mound, it is only the presence of a large elongated boulder, the recumbent (2), built into an old dyke that allows it to be identified as the remains of a recumbent stone circle. The mound stands on the leading edge of a natural terrace on the crest of the spur descending SSE from Drumbarton Hill above Terpersie. The dyke incorporating the recumbent, now somewhat dilapidated and strengthened with a wire fence, traverses the mound from N to S, dividing it into two, the larger part lying on the E. The recumbent (2), a massive block measuring about 3.5m in length by 1.55m in height, has a relatively even summit bearing at least nine small cupmarks. It is probably fairly close to its original position on the SSW, with its W end dragged round into the line of the wall immediately N of a gateway; as a result it now faces due W. The shape of the boulder leaves little doubt that this is a recumbent, though there is no record of it standing between a pair of flankers, and, with the exception of a displaced stone (A) forming the S side of the gateway, nor indeed of the rest of the ring. To the N the foundation of the dyke preserves the flat-topped profile of the mound, which is evidently the remains of a low cairn that has been heavily quarried. Now measuring 20m from N to S by 16.5m transversely and 0.5m in height, the eleven earthfast kerbstones visible around its margin suggest an original diameter a little over 16m, though the cairn may be polygonal on plan if the straight line adopted by the kerb on the SE is repeated in other sectors.
Visited by RCAHMS (ATW and KHJM) 7-8 June 1999
