Gateside

A whinstone boulder stands on the NE side of a rough farm track (between it and a drystone wall) that leads SSE from a minor public road towards The Bonnet Stane and the Maiden Bore Cave. Roughly rectangular on plan, it measures 0.8m from NE to SW by 0.55m transversely at ground-level and it rises 1.55m to a pointed top. Two pairs of lead-filled sockets, one just above ground-level and one at a height of about 1m, demonstrate that a gatepost was once secured to the SW face of the stone, adjacent to its W corner. Otherwise, the stone is completely unworked. A tubular steel gatepost, now disused, stands immediately SE of the stone.

There seems to be good reason for accepting this boulder as a genuine prehistoric standing stone. It is freestanding and has clearly been deliberately set upright in its present position independent from the adjacent drystone wall. Further, whilst there are examples in the vicinity of smaller boulders being set vertically as part of the fabric of drystone field walls, this particular boulder is massive in comparison and would have presented logistical difficulties that far outweighed any benefits derived from it being a simple gatepost. Lastly, if the boulder was erected as a gatepost it would be reasonable to expect to see another boulder, perhaps not of such grand proportions, on the opposite side of the track. There is not one.

Visited by HES Survey and Recording (JRS) 12 August 2021.