Publication Account
Date 2011
Event ID 887140
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/887140
The south wall of the burial-ground of Kinellar Parish Church incorporates three large blocks (A, B, C), two of which have long been attributed to a stone circle standing on this hilltop. They lie 5m apart, the central one (B) visible for its full length of 2.85m, and the eastern (C) now largely hidden by a later extension of the burial-ground. A third block (A) a little over 1m in length is visible in the foundation of the wall 5m to the west. Noted in the Statistical Account (iii, 1792, 505), by James Logan (Cruickshank 1941, 106) and in the New Statistical Account (xii, Aberdeenshire, 115), it is difficult to tell whether these contain a memory of a stone circle standing here or whether they are simply explaining the presence of the two stones (cf Barnatt 1989, 485, no. 6:v). Be that as it may, in 1865–6 the OS surveyors marked this as the site of a stone circle, placing a cross on the 6-inch map in the field just south of the wall (Aberdeenshire 1869, lxv). Thirty years later Coles had little hesitation in pronouncing them the flankers of a recumbent setting (1902, 503–4), but if they were pushed over as he suggested and ‘made use of, with as little effort at removal as might be, to eke out the wall’ (ibid 504), it begs the question as to why the recumbent he visualised between them was not employed in the same way. It is reasonable to conclude that there was a megalithic monument standing here, quite possibly a stone circle, but it was probably demolished long before the wall was constructed and there is no evidence that it included a recumbent setting. Such a monument was perhaps the original site of the stone bearing Pictish symbols that was dug out of the south-east corner of the old parish church in 1801 (Stuart 1856, 6; NJ81SW 6)
