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New Craig
Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Site Name New Craig
Classification Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Canmore ID 18811
Site Number NJ72NW 3
NGR NJ 7455 2966
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/18811
- Council Aberdeenshire
- Parish Daviot
- Former Region Grampian
- Former District Gordon
- Former County Aberdeenshire
NJ72NW 3.00 7455 2966
NJ72NW 3.01 NJ 745 296 Stone Axe
For adjacent cup-marked boulder, see NJ72NW 4.
(NJ 7455 2966) Stone Circle (NR).
OS 6" map, (1959)
At 400ft (122m) above sea level, at New Craig, and incorporated in the enclosing dyke of a wood, are the remains of a recumbent stone circle comprising the recumbent stone and two flankers, all of unusually large proportions. Projecting inwards from the face of the recumbent stone is an earth-fast block, 1ft 10ins (0.56m) high and 3ft (0.9m) broad, and almost touching the outer edge of this pillar is another stone, 3ft in height, apparently in situ. Three other stones are all prostrate (Coles 1902). The recumbent stone, in common with some of the other stones, exhibits a number of cup marks, and similarly marked stones said to have been brought from the circle, or the hill on which it stood, were built into the old farmhouse of New Craig, but no trace of these can now be found (Jervise 1875-9).
F R Coles 1902; A Jervise 1875-9.
The remains of a recumbent stone circle as described and planned by Coles. The alleged cup-marks on the recumbent stone are natural weathering.
Resurveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (RL) 28 February 1969.
Field Visit (27 April 1999)
What little remains of this recumbent stone circle is situated at the SW corner of a shelter belt that runs up onto the shoulder of the low hill due west of New Craig, one of several local summits that form a ridge extending southwards to the village of Daviot; lying to the SE of the summit, the circle is intervisible with Loanhead of Daviot (No. 40) some 830m to the SSE. The recumbent setting (1–3) has been incorporated into the corner of the plantation boundary, which to either side comprises an external stone face backed by a thick earthen bank, though the latter is covered to the N by a dump of field-cleared boulders. The interior of the circle is scarred by surface quarrying and there is no reason to believe that either of the two orthostats on the NE quarter, one fallen and the other re-erected 19m and 22m respectively behind the recumbent, is close to its original position. Nevertheless, the scale of the recumbent setting on the SSW of the ring suggests a diameter of at least this order, if not larger. The recumbent block (2) measures about 4.1m in length by 1.85m in height, but attempts to break it up have split the stone from top to bottom and have left the summit broken and jagged. The E flanker (3), which at 3m in height is the taller and more slender of the pair, apparently rests directly on the present ground surface and is slumped against the recumbent; while it is assumed to be in its original position, with its face aligned on the front of the recumbent, the W flanker is differently set, standing back slightly from this line. No trace of a cairn can be seen within the interior of the circle, but what may be a kerbstone about 1.3m high stands adjacent to the W flanker. Its position is not typical of those more commonly found on the kerbs of internal cairns, but it is firmly set in the ground and the face of the adjacent dyke is butted up against it. A stone axe said to derive from the ring forms part of the Ridgeway Bequest in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (CUMAA: 1927.566; NJ72NW 3.01).
Visited by RCAHMS (ATW, AJL and KHJM) 27 April 1999
Measured Survey (27 April 1999)
RCAHMS surveyed New Craig recumbent stone circle on 27 April 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 29 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, 411).
