Bogton

RCAHMS surveyed Bogton stone circle on 21 July 2005 with plane table and alidade producing a plan of the site at a scale of 1:100. The plan was used as the basis for an illustration, produced in ink and finished in vector graphics software, that was published at a scale of 1:250 (Welfare 2011, 497).

In 1810 the greater part of this stone circle was removed and only two orthostats now remain (Name Book, Elginshire, No. 21, p 53; Morrison 1872, 256). Standing 14.7m apart on a low natural rise 60m north-north-east of Bogton Cottage, both are roughly rectangular in section, the taller (2) measuring about 1.8m in height and its neighbour (1) on the south-west 1.6m; their disposition suggests that the circle was possibly as much as 34m in diameter. Burl includes Bogton in his gazetteer of stone circles (1976a, 361, Mry 2; 2000, 430, Mry 2), but on the strength of its relatively large diameter Barnatt has suggested that it may have been a recumbent stone circle or a Clava cairn (1989, 255, no. 5:7). There is no other evidence to sustain this line of argument and, with so few stones left, it is impossible to judge whether the orthostats were graded; at face value, the heights of the stones suggest they were not, but the taller on the north-east is set lower down the slope of the rise, so much so that its top is 0.1m below the top of the shorter stone on the south-west.