Braehead
Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Site Name Braehead
Classification Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Canmore ID 17643
Site Number NJ52NE 6
NGR NJ 5926 2556
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/17643
- Council Aberdeenshire
- Parish Leslie (Gordon)
- Former Region Grampian
- Former District Gordon
- Former County Aberdeenshire
NJ52NE 6 5926 2556
See also NJ52SE 24.
(NJ 5926 2556) Standing Stone (NR)
OS 6" map, (1959)
The recumbent stone of a stone circle, one end of which is supported by a flat slab which has four cup marks on its upper surface, from one to two inches in diameter and half an inch deep. The recumbent stone is 10 1/4 feet long, 3 feet broad and nearly 6 feet high. The supporting block is 3 1/2 feet long, 2 1/2 feet broad, and about 1 foot thick. The stone is one of a group of four, the others of which were removed before 1879. Quantities of human bones have been found in its immediate vicinity (A Jervise 1875-9).
A Jervise 1875-9; Name Book 1866; F R Coles 1902; J Ritchie 1918.
A recumbent stone as described and illustrated.
Visited by OS (NKB) 20 September 1967.
Field Visit (22 June 1999)
Only the recumbent remains of this stone circle. It stands at the SW edge of a large stone-walled field, occupying a position on the crest of the ridge midway between the farms of New Leslie and Braehead. The recumbent, which faces SSW, is an irregular block measuring some 3.3m in length by up to 1.8m in height, and its summit rises gently towards the WNW. A support stone at its ESE end was partly buried at the time the drawn survey was carried out in 1999, but a more recent visit in 2007 found its upper portion fully exposed, though nothing can be seen of the cupmarks James Gurnell (two; 1884) and James Ritchie identified on its top (four; 1918, 98–9). A large quartz boulder lies amongst the field-gathered stones behind the recumbent, where a faint swelling in the surface of the ground (see section) suggests the presence of an internal cairn.
Visited by RCAHMS (ATW and KHJM) 22 June 1999
Measured Survey (22 June 1999)
RCAHMS surveyed the remains of Braehead recumbent stone circle on 22 June 1999 with plane table and alidade producing a plan and section of the circle and an elevation of the recumbent stone at a scale of 1:100. The drawing was checked on site on 29 March 2000. The plan, section and elevation were redrawn in ink and used as the basis for an illustration produced in vector graphics software and published at a scale of 1:250 (Welfare 2011, 318).
