Greymuir Cairn

The Greymuir Stone, which was removed some time between 1967 and 1986, was probably a fallen orthostat of a circle enclosing a low cairn. Its site lies at the edge of a field about 180m west-south-west of Newton of Fortrie, where the 1st edition of the OS 25-inch map (Banffshire 1871, xxii) annotates a pecked circle in a small patch of uncultivated ground Greymuir Cairn (Remains of). The circle measures about 19m in diameter and the stone lies within its southern margin. By that time the cairn was already robbed and a note appended to the entry in the Name Book records ‘A large number of small stones still remain of this cairn the Greymuir stone being the largest and most remarkable’ (Banffshire, No. 19, p 16). The stone itself is described some 30 years later by Coles, as lying on its side and measuring 1.8m in length by 1.15m in height and 1.05m in thickness (1903a, 124–5). In talking to the tenant, James Wright, who had lived there over 40 years, he elicited that ‘A Circle of stones extended to the north of the monolith’ (ibid 125) and that in 1872 another smaller slab found a little to its north had been cleared to the edge of the field near the steading. Though nothing was found beneath it, Coles considered the latter was likely to be the coverstone of a cist. In referring to the Greymuir Stone as a monolith, it is clear that Coles believed it to be a fallen orthostat rather than a recumbent, and he did not list it as a remnant of a recumbent stone circle (ibid 140). A century later, over 20 years after the stone was removed, this still seems the most likely interpretation (Burl 1976a, 351, Abn 56; 2000, 420, Abn 57), despite Barnatt’s tentative suggestion that it may have been a small recumbent (1989, 461, no. 6:132).