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Auchmachar
Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Site Name Auchmachar
Classification Recumbent Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Canmore ID 20746
Site Number NJ95SW 11
NGR NJ 9485 5026
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/20746
- Council Aberdeenshire
- Parish Old Deer
- Former Region Grampian
- Former District Banff And Buchan
- Former County Aberdeenshire
NJ95SW 11 9485 5026.
(NJ 9484 5024) Stones (NR).
OS 6" map, (1959).
A complete circle of nine great stones, diameter under 50ft, in 1850, when some of the tallest, over 11ft high, were removed. Reduced to five stones in the SW arc by 1870. (OS 25" map, Aberdeenshire, 1st ed., 1870) By 1884 the remains consisted of the fire-shattered recumbent stone still in situ, the E pillar 8'4" high, erect and in situ, the fallen W pillar with another fallen stone resting upon it, and another erect stone 7'2" high in situ in the NW arc. (Peter 1885)
A fragment of an urn in Arbuthnott Museum, Peterhead, labelled, "found in 1840 beside the Stone Circle at Backhill of Auchmachar," is not of Bronze Age type; the find spot was probably not noted with sufficient accuracy. (Coles 1904).
F R Coles 1904; J Peter 1885.
The remains of a recumbent stone circle as described above.
Re-surveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (NKB) 17 April 1968.
Field Visit (31 March 2004)
The remains of this recumbent stone circle are situated on the SE slopes of Knapperty Hill, which is better known for the Knapperty Hillock long cairn lying some 220m to the WNW; indeed the site of the circle falls roughly on the projected axis of the long cairn. Formerly comprising a ring of nine stones some 15m across (Peter 1885, 373–4; Coles 1904, 273–4), it has been severely mauled; the recumbent setting is now subsumed into a pile of boulders heaped up at the edge of a field and only one other orthostat remains in place (4). The recumbent block (2), which probably had a relatively even top, lies shattered into at least three pieces on the SW of the ring, and W flanker (1) is fallen, lying beneath one end of what is probably a displaced orthostat (A). The E flanker (3), however, is still in place, standing about 2.4m high in the line of the field dyke immediately to the SE. It is also the more slender of the two, set flush with the front of the recumbent and projecting the long axis of the setting. At the rear of the setting, three earthfast boulders can be seen, one adjacent to the fallen W flanker and two immediately behind the E flanker; measuring up to 1m in height, those on the E clearly forge a link with the E corner of the recumbent, indicating that they are probably kerbstones belonging to a ring-bank or an internal cairn (below). Many of the boulders built into the adjacent dyke were probably cleared from this and one of them, set in the ground on the SW side of a gateway to the NE, bears a single cupmark measuring 50mm in diameter and up to 20mm in depth.
Visited by RCAHMS (ATW and KHJM) 31 March 2004
Measured Survey (31 March 2004)
RCAHMS surveyed the remains of Auchmachar recumbent stone circle on 31 March 2004 with plane table and alidade producing a plan and section of the site and an elevation of the principal stones at a scale of 1:100. The survey drawing was redrawn in ink and used as the basis for an illustration produced in vector graphics software for publication at a scale of 1:250 (Welfare 2011, 292).
