Auchnacraig 4

Auchnacraig 5 NS 501 736 NS57SW 36

An outcrop of rock bearing cup-and-ring markings.

RCAHMS 1978

(Morris 1968, 76, no. 252)

CFA Archaeology Ltd undertook an assessment of the cultural heritage implications of the proposed route of a replacement overhead line (XF Route) from Neilston, Renfrewshire to Windyhill, East Dunbartonshire.

Although 109 cultural heritage features were identified by the desk-based assessment of the 250m buffer around the proposed route of the replacement XF overhead line, very few of these lie along the route of the line, or in immediate vicinity of the location of any of the towers.

The overhead line replacement project has been assessed against the cultural heritage baseline. Taking into account the construction methodology to be employed and agreed mitigation strategy, it is considered that the development conforms to Local and National Policy relating to the cultural heritage resource.

Funder: Iberdrola

CFA Archaeology Ltd

Date Fieldwork Started: 15/03/2019

Compiled by: ScRAP

Location Notes: The panel is situated at ground level in gorse and open woodland on a flat terrace towards the bottom of a NW sloping hillside approximately 30m S of the burn. It is about 50m S of the houses and road at the N edge of Faifley and in an area that is a Council-owned public park. It lies almost beneath electricity cables and 55m SSW of a pylon.

Panel Notes: The panel is an exposed area of sandstone bedrock roughly 6.5x5m in extent. It has a slightly domed, undulating surface with a wide linear depression running E-W, and featuring several fissures and natural hollows. There is an area of eroded red paint on the S surface, with four sets of incised graffiti letters: PMA (incised twice), AT, and PA. There are multiple cup and ring carvings spread over the E and S sections on the larger part of the exposed surface, and a smaller group along the N edge of the wide depression. The carvings on the main part of the panel include 36 cups (some of which may be natural), 2 cups with long radial grooves, 2 cups with single rings, 4 cups with single rings and gapped second rings, 1 cup with a gapped ring, 1 cup with a gapped ring and radial, and 1 arc. The smaller group includes 1 cup, 1 cup with a single gapped ring, and a complex motif comprising 3 cups with intersecting rings, 2 of which also have inner intersecting rings.

NS 50291 73657, NS 50304 73623, NS 50116 73543 Faifley

Rocks is a campaign to investigate the prehistoric rock-art around Faifley, Clydebank. The project includes excavation and survey of all cup-and-ring marked rocks outcrops in the area, and a programme of community engagement. The best-known site in the area is the Cochno Stone.

Excavations took place in August 2021 around three rock art panels in Auchnacraig Park, Faifley. These panels are known as Auchnacraig 1, 2 and 4 in the new Scotland’s Rock Art Project nomenclature. Panels 1 and 2 are located in the former garden of Auchnacraig House, which was demolished in the 1970s; panel 3 is located some 200m to the W in the park, just a few metres S of Cochno Burn. In total, three trenches were opened at Auchnacraig 2, two trenches at Auchnacraig 1, and an expanded area of vegetation was cleared on the N and E sides of Auchnacraig 4. Each trench was small and in no cases were any additional symbols found, not was any material culture directly associated with the rock-art recovered. Remnants of a gravel path that passed beside the carved stone in the garden of Auchnacraig House were identified in two trenches on the N side of Auchnacraig 2.

Two trenches were opened in the location of the former

Auchnacraig House drawing on map work and geophysical survey undertaken as part of the same project in 2019 (DES Volume 20, 205–6; previous excavations at Auchnacraig 1 were also documented in that same report). The trenches were located on the S and N sides of where the house once stood and in both trenches rubble and collapse layers indicated that the house had been demolished and levelled after a fire, probably when the park was established in the early 1980s. Drains, pipes, and remnants of electrical systems were also found. Geophysical survey was undertaken in the location nearby where stables and a garden once stood.

More information is available in the report on the Urban

Prehistorian blog: https://theurbanprehistorian.wordpress.com/ category/cochno-stone/

Archive: University of Glasgow Funder: University of Glasgow

Kenneth Brophy, Tessa Poller, Aurime Bockute, Rebecca Younger – University of Glasgow

(Source: DES Vol 22)