Daviot Church
Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Site Name Daviot Church
Classification Stone Circle (Neolithic) - (Bronze Age)
Alternative Name(s) Daviot Churchyard; Daviot Kirkyard
Canmore ID 18800
Site Number NJ72NW 2
NGR NJ 74950 28237
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/18800
- Council Aberdeenshire
- Parish Daviot
- Former Region Grampian
- Former District Gordon
- Former County Aberdeenshire
Publication Account (2011)
The presence of what may have been a megalithic monument in the churchyard at Daviot is first mentioned by Rev Robert Shepherd in the Statistical Account, who describes it as one of two Druid temples in the parish (vi, 1793, 86), the other being the recumbent stone circle at Loanhead of Daviot. According to James Logan, who probably visited Daviot about 1818 (Cruickshank 1941, xxiii), it stood on the south side of the burial-ground and comprised ‘two very large rough stones, one of which forms part of the side wall of a cottage’ (Cruickshank 1941, 34). Both were removed shortly after and broken up for reuse in other buildings (NSA, xii, Aberdeenshire, 822; Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 24, p 32); no trace of them can now be detected within either the burial-ground or the walls of buildings standing nearby. Although Daviot does not figure in any of the consolidated lists as a recumbent stone circle (Burl 2000, 421, Abn 71b), Burl implies that it may have been another example in various guidebook and gazetteer entries for Loanhead of Daviot (Thom et al 1980, 191; Burl 2005a, 102). At best this monument can be described only as a possible stone circle, but in truth there is insufficient evidence to be sure that these stones were any more than two erratic boulders.