Publication Account
Date 2011
Event ID 887309
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/887309
These two stones, one standing and the other prostrate, are situated on a south-facing terrace in a field 80m north-east of Nether Wheedlemont. The upright stone (B), an impressive pillar measuring 1.3m by 0.5m at ground level, tapers upwards to a pointed top at a height of 2.9m. Its prostrate neighbour (A), which lies about 25m to the west-south-west, measures 3.6m in length by up to 1m in breadth and 0.7m in thickness. It also narrows towards its east-south-east end. The identification of these two stones as the remains of a stone circle goes back to a ‘Local tradition’ reported by the OS surveyors in 1865–6, and they were duly annotated Stone Circle (Remains of) on the OS 25- inch map (Aberdeenshire 1870, xlii.12). The entry in the Name Book, however, reveals some difference of opinion amongst the authorities they consulted and in the column for alternative spellings of the name it also lists Stone Circle (supposed) and Standing Stones, the latter scored through with a finality that left no doubt which camp won the day (Aberdeenshire, No. 6, p 37). The western stone was already lying prone, and the measurements appearing beside sketches of the two stones on the same page implies that it was on one of its narrower sides. This is not how Coles’ sketches depict it in 1901 (1902, 561–3, figs 76–7) and a photograph taken by James Ritchie (RCAHMS AB2937) shows it rolled onto one of its broader faces with the narrower east-south-east end cocked up into the air. Since then it has fallen back to recline horizontally on what is probably a bed of field-gathered stones. Coles was the first to consider the possibility that this stone was a recumbent, though he felt it was too thin, particularly at its east-south-east end. He was evidently unaware that it had been rolled quite recently, but the argument that clinched it for him was that the ‘tall Standing Stone, 87 feet [26.5m] to the north, is not set with its broad face looking towards the centre of any Circle of which this fallen monolith could have been the Recumbent Stone’ (ibid, 563); in manuscript he noted ‘in its present line’ in his volume of the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, now held by the Royal Commission. Despite concluding that it was a fallen orthostat, this probably reveals a lingering suspicion on his part that the stone was indeed a recumbent. In contrast, Alexander Keiller was not persuaded that the two stones had formed part of a circle at all (1934, 4), but Burl included them in his gazetteer of stone circles (1976a, 353, Abn 114), more recently revising his opinion of their classification to a possible recumbent stone circle (2000, 422, Abn 119). While the huge prostrate stone certainly gives an initial impression of a recumbent, this does not stand close scrutiny, particularly when the relative positions of the two stones are considered; a circle whose circumference adopts the axis of the upright stone (B) tangentially and passes close to the west-north-west end of its prostrate fellow (A) would measure in excess of 40m in diameter – well beyond even the largest of the recorded recumbent stone circles. Barnatt’s suggestion that they formed a row or alignment is equally unsatisfactory, for it is founded on the mistaken belief that the long axis of the east stone is aligned on its fallen neighbour (1989, 488, no. 6:pp). This is not the case and nor is it set at right-angles to an axis drawn between them. The present survey can offer no other solutions.
