Publication Account
Date 2011
Event ID 886983
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/886983
Craighead, or Badentoy as it is sometimes called after the farm to the north-east, does not appear in any lists of recumbent stone circles, but in one of her plates Christian Maclagan applies the name Bodentoy to a circle with six stones and the pecked outline of a plate that led Alfred Lewis to comment that it was uncertain whether or not there had been an altar-stone here (1900, 72). A closer reading of Maclagan’s text, however, reveals that this is the name she gave to Old Bourtreebush (NO99NW 2; 1875, 73). Standing within the raised interior of a walled enclosure, the Craighead circle now comprises four stones set out at the corners of a rhombus measuring 9m from north-north-west to south-south-east by 7m transversely. This has led Burl to include Craighead in his gazetteer of four posters (1988b, 130–1), but there is some doubt that any of them is standing in its original socket. In 1899 Coles’ suspicions were aroused by the way in which the stones appeared to stand at the cardinal points and had been drilled to take the iron rings anchoring the guys of a flagstaff at the centre (1900, 150 fig 10, 151). The flagstaff, however, seems to have been an afterthought to an earlier remodelling of the circle and there is no sign of it on the plan drawn up in 1884 by William Lukis (GM7828.37). This shows the four stones standing in their present positions within the enclosure, and he also records that the northernmost had been re-erected by the tenant (1885, 305). However, the depiction on the 1st edition of the OS 25-inch map drawn another fifteen years earlier is very different, showing three stones disposed around the south arc of a much larger circle (Kincardineshire 1868, vii). Three is also the number that Alexander Thomson noted in 1858 when he excavated here in company with Charles Dalrymple and others. Thomson believed that there had originally been seven, standing on a raised platform. Digging in the centre they discovered traces of a cremation deposit (1864, 130–1). The platform was ‘about 60 yards in circumference’ (ibid), which roughly accords with the stony outline some 17m across shown on the 1st edition of the OS map, but this was cut back to little more than 10m in diameter when the low revetment wall was built. Of the four stones now present, the southernmost is possibly still in its original socket, but the rest were almost certainly re-positioned within the new enclosure. Without excavation it will not be possible to demonstrate the true character of this circle and its relationship to the platform, but there is no reason to believe that it incorporated a recumbent setting.
