Gray Stone, Cortiecram

The Gray Stone, which was described by Coles as ‘a huge pillar-like mass of whinstone, but fallen half prostrate towards the south’ (1904, 281), was removed in the late 1940s. It has never entered any of the lists of recumbent stone circles, but in a recent publication Garth Weston speculated that ‘this gigantic block was probably the recumbent of another ring’ (2007, 136). The name of the stone was not known to OS surveyors in 1869–70 and thus it does not appear in the Name Book; nor was it recognised as an antiquity to justify its depiction on the 1st edition of the 6-inch map. Nevertheless, the 25-inch map shows the outline of the stone near the north-east corner of an irregular field about 350m south-south-west of Cortiecram (Aberdeenshire 1872, xiv.10), while the name ‘Graystone Pot’ is applied to a stretch of the North Ugie Water about 360m to its south-south-east (Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 57, p 17; No. 58, p 70). By tradition the stone had toppled on a treasure hunter digging beneath it (Milne 1889, 43; Coles 1904, 281 note; Ritchie 1926, 309) and its leaning posture is apparently enshrined in the place-name Cortiecram, on record in 1446 as Cortycrum and in 1696 as Corthicram, and derived by William Alexander from the Gaelic Coirthe crom, meaning ‘bent or crooked standing stone’ (1952, 39). The stone was also sufficiently well-known in the district to appear in local rhymes (Mormond 1889, 28–9; Grinsell 1976, 209), one of which is recorded by Coles’ local informant, John Milne (1889, 43). Milne provides the first brief description of the stone, which he believed was not simply an erratic block but one that had been set upright; and the presence of a circular hollow in the ground adjacent led him to conclude that it was the last survivor of a circle. There is no hint in Coles’ brief commentary that he observed this hollow and, if only in deference to the valuable service provided by his source, he merely repeats the local tradition of a circle. It is perfectly clear from his description, however, that he did not consider that the stone itself was a recumbent and he never listed the site as the remains of a possible recumbent stone circle (1904, 293). Whereas recumbents in his surveys are consistently measured in height, length and thickness, in this case he approached the stone as a pillar: ‘Around its middle it measures about 18 feet [5.5m]. Its present greatest height is 6 feet 8 inches [2m], and its greatest length over 11 feet [3.3m]’ (1904, 281). In the absence of any new information, Weston’s speculation is unwarranted, particularly when it is recalled that Coles had by this time visited and measured most of the stone circles and many of the standing stones in the North-east.