Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
South Fornet
Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Site Name South Fornet
Classification Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Alternative Name(s) Fornet; The South Fornet Stones
Canmore ID 18687
Site Number NJ71SE 1
NGR NJ 78290 10979
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/18687
- Council Aberdeenshire
- Parish Skene
- Former Region Grampian
- Former District Gordon
- Former County Aberdeenshire
NJ71SE 1 78290 10979
(NJ 7829 1097) Stone Circle (NR) (Remains of).
OS 6" map, Aberdeenshire, 2nd ed., (1901).
Location fomerly entered as NJ 7829 1097.
A pair of flanking stones of blueish whinstone 6ft 10ins and 6ft 6ins respectively with a space of 6ft 8ins between for a recumbent stone - now disappeared, are situated in Skene parish about 2 miles north of the Loch and are known as the South Fornet stones. Five other stones of this former circle are lying where they have fallen-only one is up to 5ft long.
The ground in front of the flankers rises into a bank of uncertain dimensions about 4ft higher than their bases, and there is an oblong trench on the eastern side near to where the bank "runs out". Probable recumbent stone circle (Henshall 1963).
F R Coles 1902; G F Browne 1921; A S Henshall 1963.
The pair of flanking stones 2.0m high mentioned above are still in situ, but only two other stones of this former circle are evident, one, 2.0m long, where it has fallen, and the other, 1.7m long,lying in front of the flanking stones. This site has been used for field clearance and there is no evidence of the bank or ditch, a burial cairn, or of the remaining standing stones. The stones are still known locally as 'The South Fornet Stones'.
Resurveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (RD) 8 January 1964.
(Name cited as The South Fornet Stones).
NMRS, MS/712/68.
Scheduled as 'South Fornet, stone circle 250m NW of... the remains of a recumbent stone circle...'
Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 16 February 2009.
Field Visit (24 May 1999 - 25 May 1999)
This recumbent stone circle has been reduced to little more than the flankers of its recumbent setting and a single fallen orthostat. These are situated in the field immediately WNW of the OS triangulation station on the ENE side of the broad summit of the hill above South Fornet. Formerly a plantation in the improved landscape (Aberdeenshire 1869, lxiv), the ground reverted into pasture following the removal of the trees about 1920 and the flankers now stand at the S end of a low tump strewn with field-gathered stones and trimmed by the ploughing that has taken place round about. The recumbent stone does not survive and there is no record of its existence (see below), but the positions of the flankers (1 & 3) show that it was probably of modest proportions, measuring no more than 2.2m in length and facing just W of S. The flankers are both impressive stones standing about 1.95m high, the western (1) being a relatively broad slab with a striking band of quartz extending up its E edge, and the eastern (3) a more slender pillar but with sheets of quartz all over its S face. Both are turned slightly, apparently tracing the arc of a circle about 10m in diameter, and, like so many other pairs of flankers, their tops rise obliquely inwards in a way that would have created the impression that they lent over the ends of the recumbent; both are disfigured by graffiti. The rectangular block A embedded in the ground due E of the setting is scarred with plough scratches on its upper surface and has probably been cut down from one of the orthostats. Another stone (B) lying behind the E flanker appears to have been split from a larger rock, and several more (C–F) are also reduced fragments, one of them (C) exhibiting a shot-hole on one edge.
Visited by RCAHMS (ATW and KHJM) 24-5 May 1999
Measured Survey (24 May 1999 - 25 May 1999)
RCAHMS surveyed the remains of South Fornet recumbent stone circle between 24-25 May 1999 with plane table and alidade producing a plan and section of the site and an elevation of the recumbent setting at a scale of 1:100. The survey drawing was checked on-site on 2 March 2000. The plan, section and elevation were 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, 449).
