Archaeology Notes

Event ID 665280

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/665280

NJ04NW 3 0340 4680

See also NJ04NW 1 and NJ04NW 14.

(NJ 0339 4681 and NJ 0344 4682) Standing Stones (NR)

OS 6" map, Morayshire, 1st ed. (1871).

Standing Stones (NR) (Site of)

OS 6" map, Morayshire, 2nd ed., (1906).

The Ordnance Survey Name Book (ONB) says, in 1871, that there were two standing stones, 2ft broad and 4ft high, generally supposed to have been a religious place of the Danes, from which theory has been derived the name Chapel Hill. (Name Book 1871).

Coles, in 1906, indentifies the more westerly of these stones as being 'A' on his plan, although by this time they were evidently gone, and his dimension of 'A' (2ft 8ins high) does not correspond with that given by the ONB. It must therefore by assumed that 'A' is not the published stone but is very near its site, as evidenced by Cole's statement that it is 52 yards to the edge of a cairn (NJ04NW 1).

Coles describes his alleged stone circle thus:-

A - a small block of quartzose schist, 2ft 8ins high, vertical.

B - 1ft 7ins high, with one vertical side.

C, D, F - insignificant in respect of height.

E - a fallen stone, its broad end originally its base.

G - a slight hollow.

On a large part of the moorland to the north and east of this site, similar, but smaller, stones occur in outlines not unlike this circle. (see NJ04NW 1 - Field clearance mounds and hut-circles).

F R Coles 1907.

The only remaining stones of Coles' stone circle are those marked 'A' and 'B' on his plan. It is impossible to say whether they are the remains of a stone circle or not but, from the location of the stones in Coles' plan, it seems, unlikely that this is an antiquity.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 26 August 1965.