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St Mirren's Well (Sacred Well) — Images (click to view fullsize)

<b>St Mirren's Well</b>Posted by markj99<b>St Mirren's Well</b>Posted by markj99<b>St Mirren's Well</b>Posted by markj99<b>St Mirren's Well</b>Posted by markj99<b>St Mirren's Well</b>Posted by markj99 Posted by markj99
15th October 2023ce

St Mirren's Well (Sacred Well) — Fieldnotes

Visited 06.10.23

St Mirren's Well is located c. 1 mile N of Kilsyth, in North Lanarkshire. The natural spring has been enclosed in a water tank distributing the water to Colzium according to Canmore ID 45896. A stone slab with 1687 deeply inscribed on the top is exposed on the W corner of the water tank. There is a piped outflow SE of the tank leading down a series of stone steps to a small pool of water. This pool feeds a boggy area around it. This is the new location for St Mirren Well, c. 20 yards SE of the water tank.
Posted by markj99
15th October 2023ce

Arran — News

Excavations of Cursus at Tormore


Archaeologists have been excavating the recently-discovered 1.1km long cursus on the island of Arran. The article in The Scotsman shows the Lidar scans that alerted them to the parallel mounds (now merely 30cm high). Few examples are known from the west coast of Scotland.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
4th September 2023ce

Hully Hill Monument (Artificial Mound) — Miscellaneous

I'm glad HornbyPorky's fieldnotes say the graffiti is gone. I thought I'd add this to show the indignities have been going on for a while. I hope when McDonalds crumbles these stones will still be here.

On Saturday, the Greater Edinburgh Club, under the leadership of Mr Sterling Craig, visited "Edinburgh's Stonehenge," a group of four large stones at Lochend, opposite the point where the new Glasgow road branches off the old road to Broxburn. For 4000 years these megaliths have stood like the peak of a submerged mountain rising out of the ocean of prehistoric darkness, but testifying to the existence of a lost continent.

Local tradition says that there was originally an avenue of standing stones, 350 yards long, crossed by a shorter double row of megaliths about 80 yards from its western end. A Bronze Age burial ground, 30 yards in diameter, of much later date, has been erected in the northern part of the crossing. The eastmost megalith is eleven feet high and three to four feet broad, and the others are about six feet in height, standing at the souther, western, and northern extremities of the crossing avenues.

The unity of the monument is now difficult to recognise, because it is broken by a deep railway cutting and a wide road. The terminal megalith (now in a piggery) is obscured from the rest by a large advertisement hoarding, but it undoubtedly belongs to the same period as Stonehenge and was erected by the same fogotten race.
In The Scotsman, 23rd May 1938.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
31st May 2023ce

Sannox (Standing Stone / Menhir) — Folklore

A single Druidical stone is visible in front of the farm house of Sannox, in the middle of the green field. Many remains of a similar kind are still extant in the mosses and glens of the island. Of late much has been done to solve the enigma of those monoliths.

A pretty tradition has been handed down of a daughter of Fingal going out to meet her lover in the woods, having disguised herself by dressing in man's clothes; her lover, deceived by the circumstance, espied her amid the thick wooding, and, supposing her a foe, took his bow and drew an arrow from his quiver, and unfortunately killed his love. On the ground where she fell, he raised the tall monolith to commemorate the sad event, and had a second placed for himself not far from it - committing self-immolation. Her remains were buried entire, but his received all a chieftain's honours and druidical rites, placed in an urn, inside a stone chest, alongside of his love.

Such is the tradition as handed down. There is still a love of the superstitious and the marvellous amongst the islanders. Yet, strange it is, in the very centre and civilization here are as great attempts to revive that ancient spirit of magic, hence those seances and impositions. There seems little doubt now regarding one use of those stones, that they were raised to mark the last resting place of the ashes of the great. This seems quite established.
In the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald, 9th August 1862.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
29th May 2023ce

Ballageich Hill (Cairn(s)) — Links

Ballageich Hill on Google Maps


Ballageich Hill on Google Maps
Posted by markj99
6th May 2023ce
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