Sandend

There was a very small barrow, a hundred paces from the windmill (NJ56 NE 3). The ditch which surrounded it is still visible, but the earth of the tumulus has long been removed.

Stat. Acct. 1791-9.

No trace of the tumulus was found. Its site is now in a cultivated field.

Visited by OS (WDJ) 19 September 1961.

Coles (1906) was misled in identifying this barrow and a neighbouring cairn (NJ56NE 3.1) as stone circles, by a poor and ambiguous summary made by his authority – W. S. Cramond, the writer of a piece in the Transactions of the Banffshire Field Club (1884). Cramond had described the cairn as ‘a circle of stones 14 feet high and 60 feet broad’ - predictably glossed by Coles as 60 feet in diameter; but the original source of this information was the Reverend James Lawtie’s report on the parish of Fordyce in the Statistical Account (1792), where he makes no mention of ‘a circle of stones’. Lawtie had written that there were ‘some Druidical temples, likewise burrows or tumuli’ in the parish and his ensuing description clearly refers to these ‘burrows or tumuli’. Having described the cairn, he continues by recording the presence of this ‘comparatively very small burrow, at about a hundred paces distance from the larger’.

Following Coles’ misinterpretation of the passage, Burl (1976; 2000) distinguished the cairn and the barrow, as ‘Sandend Bay A’ (NJ56NE 3.01) and ‘Sandend Bay B’ (NJ56NE 4) respectively; and then cautiously included them in his County Gazetteer of Stone Circles. However, Barnatt (apparently without reference to Lawtie) correctly surmised the character of both monuments (Barnatt 1989).

Information from HES, Survey and Recording (ATW) 28 January 2019