Culsh

In the late 18th century, probably about 1770 (NSA, xii, Aberdeenshire, 177), a Druidical temple was removed from the farm of Standingstones to provide stones for the foundations of the manse at New Deer (Stat Acct, ix, 1793, 191). On the strength of the place-name alone this was probably a megalithic ring, and Rev Hugh Taylor, the minister of the parish, placed it ‘about half a mile north from the church’ (ibid), a location that falls on the lower slopes of the Hill of Culsh to the south of Standingstones steading. The exact position of the circle and its character are unknown, but in 1870, almost 100 years after its removal, Alexander Wilson of Mill of Auchreddie pointed out its site on the summit of the Hill of Culsh to the OS surveyors, claiming to remember ‘when a boy to have seen one of the stones which formed part of the circle standing near where the Trig Station now is’ (Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 64, p 52); apparently confronted with an eyewitness, the OS surveyors duly marked the site of the circle on the summit (Aberdeenshire 1874, xx; NJ84NE 2, NJ 8811 4829) where the monument commemorating William Dingwall-Fordyce MP (1836–1875) now stands. Alexander Wilson, however, was only born in 1802, some 30 years after the circle is supposed to have been removed, so his testimony cannot be considered reliable. Nevertheless, some memory of where the circle stood may have survived into the 20th century, sufficient for Rev William Beveridge to mount an excavation in 1913 at what he believed to be the spot, assisted by the tenant of the farm, James Littlejohn, and his sons. Explicitly, this was in one of the fields on the south face of the hill rather than anywhere on its summit (Beveridge 1914, 191–2), its site identifiable by the quartz scattered in the ploughsoil. This was spread over an area about 9m across, within which they found ‘masses of burnt soil’. On further investigation they also discovered four pits, two of which were filled with stones and had possibly contained inhumations. Mr Littlejohn was no stranger to archaeological remains on his farm (Abercromby 1901), but he was not the tenant when the OS surveyors prepared the Name Book and may not have held the farm from long before the turn of the century. As a result it is not clear whether Beveridge had tapped into surviving local lore, or whether Littlejohn’s discoveries in his fields had simply led him to rationalise his own observations with the parish records held in the two Statistical Accounts. The enduring quality of quartz, however, holds the promise that this particular location might still be identified by field-walking. In conclusion, there is no reason to doubt that a stone circle once stood on the lower slopes of the Hill of Culsh, but its exact position is lost and in the absence of any compelling antiquarian description there are no grounds to identify it as a recumbent stone circle. Burl first raised this possibility, based on the understanding that it stood on the flank of the hill and that its site correlated with the quartz and burning reported by Beveridge (Burl 1970, 73, 79; 1976a, 351, Abn 39; 2000, 420, Abn 38); Ruggles was more sceptical (1984, 56 note c, 59; 1999, 186, no. 14; cf Barnatt 1989, 460, no. 6:123).