Archaeology Notes

Event ID 677236

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/677236

NN53NW 19 5308 3670.

(Area centred : NN 5285 3660) There is a standing stone, damaged by blasting, in the centre of one of the groups of deserted buildings at Tirai (NN53NW 2).

E A Cormack 1952

This standing stone, at NN 5308 3670, is situated on a slight plateau in the midst of an old farmstead. It measures c.1.3m high x 1.2m wide and 0.5m thick. It is possibly a survivor of a stone circle as a similar stone is used nearby as a gate-post to an enclosure and several other large stones have been incorporated in the walls of the surrounding buildings.

Stone surveyed at 1/10,000.

Visited by OS (RD) 20 August 1969 and (BS) 8 September 1975

The dimensions of this standing stone are 1.05m high, 1.0m wide and 0.4m thick. It shows evidence of attempts to blast it in a drill hole 0.3m long on the east face. The central area among the features noted on NN53NW 2.31-2.34 is not level. It is stony and in one part there is the suggestion that stone was removed from it.

Though the OS suggest that this standing stone was part of a stone circle involving the stone in the enclosure wall (NN53NW 2.34), and maybe also the very large stone which was used in the construction of NN53NW 2.32, it is difficult to see how this circle must have lain if it were so. That the are was once occupied by a cairn has also been suggested.

A Johnstone and J S Wood 1990; NMRS MS/681, no.70.