St John's Kirk

RCAHMS surveyed this site by plane-table on 22 July 1958 at a scale of 1mm:1ft during a survey of marginal land. The resultant plan was redrawn in ink in 1974 and published at a reduced size in the County Inventory of Lanarkshire (RCAHMS 1978, Figure 43).

NS93NE 18 9816 3599.

(NS 9816 2599) Settlement (NR)

OS 25" map, (1972).

This settlement was in a similar condition (cf. RCAHMS 1978) when seen in 1968.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (WDJ) 26 January 1968.

NS 981 359. This settlement, enclosed within an annexe, is situated in a plantation, on a ridge overlooking the Clyde valley from a height of 275m OD. It measures 37m by 23m within a wall (A on RCAHMS 1978 plan, fig.43) which has probably consisted of a core of earth and rubble faces with boulders. No facing stones are visible, but the core material still stands to a height of 0.9m and it is likely that the wall was originally about 2.4m in thickness. On the W the wall has been reduced to a scarp. The original entrance, 2.7m wide, is on the SE, a narrow gap cutting obliquely across the wall on the E being modern. The interior has formerly been under cultivation and is now featureless.

The annexe wall (B) is accompanied by an external quarry-ditch. On the S side, both the wall and the ditch have been destroyed by the erosion of the steep flank of the ridge, but elsewhere the wall appears as a stony bank lying between 10m and 18m outside wall 'A'. Measuring up to 6.1m in thickness at the base, it stands only 0.6m above the interior but as much as 1.8m above the bottom of the ditch. The entrance is in the SE, in line with that of the settlement.

RCAHMS 1978, visited July 1969.