Scheduled Maintenance
Please be advised that this website will undergo scheduled maintenance on the following dates: •
Every Thursday from 17th October until 7th November from 11:00 to 15:00 •
Tuesday, 22nd October from 11:00 to 15:00
During these times, some services may be temporarily unavailable. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Field Visit
Date 10 April 2003
Event ID 635164
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/635164
Situated in a small patch of rough ground, this recumbent stone circle lies in the improved pasture on the E side of the saddle between Knock Hill and the ridge rising eastwards to Mulloch Hill. The general trend of the ground falls away to the NW and the circle is set astride a natural N-facing scarp. Measuring about 24m in diameter, it originally comprised twelve stones, but four of the orthostats are now missing and the ring-cairn within the interior is also heavily robbed. The recumbent (2) lies on the SSE of the ring, though the setting itself faces S. A rough boulder with an uneven summit sloping down to the E, it measures 2.9m in length, and at 1.4m in height it is not much lower than its flankers. The western flanker (1), which has lost a fragment off the back of its top, is a slender pillar 1.6m high, contrasting with its broad, squat neighbour 1.05m high on the E (3). Both are set back from the leading face of the recumbent and turned slightly as if to trace the arc of the circle. The five orthostats surviving upright (4–8) indicate that the stones are set out at intervals of between 5m and 6m, and are consistently graded to reduce in height northwards to a stone only 0.9m high on the NNE (5). In addition to these five there is an orthostat immediately outside the circle on the WNW (A). Canted over to the NW, but with its SE end still embedded in the ground, it was almost certainly once upright in this position, where it has been for at least 140 years (see below); that said, its N edge appears to have been split lengthwise, and it is possibly one of the missing orthostats of the ring that has been re-erected. The ring-cairn within the interior now forms a flat-topped mound up to 0.8m high. It measures roughly 18m in diameter over an outer kerb of slabs and boulders that turns outwards on the SSE to meet the back of the recumbent setting; with the skewed position of the recumbent, the E arm of the projecting kerb is almost twice as long as the W arm. The central court is 6m in diameter and, in contrast to the outer kerb, the eleven remaining stones of its kerb appear to be graded to increase in height towards the S. Excavations in 1873 revealed a masonry cist in a pit at the centre of the court (see below). The only other feature of note is a small slab almost flush with the ground immediately adjacent to the W flanker. It has the appearance of a kerbstone and in this position hints at the presence of a platform of cairn material between the ring-cairn and the surrounding circle, though no such feature can now be detected beneath the field clearance that is strewn around the margins of the ring.
Visited by RCAHMS (ATW and KHJM)
