Publication Account
Date 2011
Event ID 887131
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/887131
This stone setting is situated in Dam Wood immediately north-east of the disused Deeside railway. Probably comprising six small stones between 0.8m and 1m in height, only five remain upright. Four of them are set out in a rough square to form the east-north-east and west-south-west sides of the setting, while the fifth stands on its axis on the south-south-east. The latter was probably matched by the sixth on the north-north-west to form a symmetrical arrangement some 7.6m in overall length by 3.45m in breadth; the long axis of the stone on the south-south-east is aligned with the axis of the setting. The setting was annotated Stone Circle by the OS surveyors in 1864, at which time all six stones were upright (Name Book, Kincardineshire, No. 3, p 26), but when William Lukis drew up his plan in 1884 the one on the north-north-west had already fallen (1885, 303, 304–5; GM7829.29). Lukis noted that the setting was not circular, but Alfred Lewis included Glassel in his paper on Scottish stone circles. There it is noted in an appendix listing sites that he deemed ‘so incomplete that it is uncertain whether they possessed an “altar-stone” or not’ (1900, 72), which perhaps implies that he had no firsthand knowledge of the stones. Any question that the setting might have included a recumbent was dispelled by Coles’ survey in 1899 (1900, 168–71, figs 24–5) and James Ritchie’s photographs taken in 1902 (RCAHMS KC316 and 317); a third photograph taken the following year is staged with the fallen stone on the north-north-west re-erected (RCAHMS KC315). An excavation by Coles (1905, 202–5) and a survey by Alexander Thom (Thom 1967, 137; Thom et al 1980, 212–13) have confirmed the general character of the setting, which Burl has suggested is a four-poster with an outlier (1988b, 132– 3; 2000, 429, Knc 14). Despite his arguments for the close links between four-posters and recumbent circles (1988b, 15; 2000, 229–31), there can be no doubt that Glassel has no place in the present Gazetteer.
