Archaeology Notes

Event ID 668201

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/668201

NJ52NE 7 5790 2517

(NJ 5790 2517) Ringing Stone (NR)

Site of (NAT) Cairn (NR)

OS 6" map, (1959).

See also NJ52SE 24.

A standing stone having an appearance very like one of the flanking stones of a recumbent stone circle. It is 6 1/2 feet high, 2 1/2 feet broad and about a foot thick. On its E face is a single cup-mark, 2in diameter and 1/2in deep, 2 feet from the ground on the south edge. The W face has six cups, the largest two being 2in diameter and the others 1 1/2in diameter and 1/4in deep, one of which is only 6 inches from the ground. Additionally there are two doubtful cups about halfway up near the N edge of the stone. The tenants of Cotetown, in 1866, said that they remembered a cairn here, the stones of which were used to build Cotetown. The origin of the name was unknown but the stone was said to be haunted.

J Ritchie 1918; Name Book 1866.

Ringing Stone, as described by Ritchie (1918).

No trace of a cairn.

Re-surveyed at 1/2500

Visited by OS (NKB) 20 September 1967.

The Ringing Stone is an erect granite boulder, which is situated in the NE corner of a cultivated field 230m NNW of Johnston farmsteading (NJ52SE 44). In section, the stone measures a maximum of 0.7m from NNE to SSW by 0.35m transversely, but in profile it is claw-shaped, the SSW side sloping steeply from a point 1.1m above the ground-level to meet the vertical NNE side at the top of the stone at a height of 2m. On the lower part of the WNW face there are at least four shallow cupmarks, the largest measuring up to 50mm in diameter; a single depression in the ESE face is probably natural.

Although the profile of the stone is typical of some of those employed as 'flankers' in recumbent stone circles, it could not have done in its present position, since its current long axis would place it on the ESE or WNW side of any circle that may have existed here. Nevertheless, the presence of the cairn that is said to have previously stood close to the stone, of which there is now no trace, is another feature that may indicate that this is the site of a recumbent stone circle.

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS), 23 June 1999.

Scheduled as 'Ringing Stone, standing stone, 275m NNW of Johnston... a standing stone with cupmarkings of prehistoric date...'

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 1 March 2007.