Latest Fieldnotes

[visited 30 July 2006] The grass verge had recently been cut, including right to the edge of the stone. It sits in the middle of a lengthy strip of grass between the lay by and the main road, opposite a public path leading alongside a wood and flanked by numerous wild flowers. Despite the fast traffic nearby the area around the stone seemed quite restful. The nail is still embedded in the stone but looks relatively recent in origin. I took a number of pictures as previously there were only two.

Along with Baurnodeemy this must be the most complete tomb on the commons. It is in great condition and has a few unusual features at the rear. The rear of the chamber seems to be almost perfectly straight and there is also a long stone of the same width of the tomb and about 0.5m height lying in the thistles.

This is found by carrying on up the lane from west crowlands to the old abandoned farm-house. Just before the entrance to the farm there is a red gate, open this (its in bad repair so don’t climb over) then there is a gap on the left. Go thru the gap and there are some low blackthorn trees on ur right. Enter the field on the other side of them and look across into the field next door you should be able to see the standing stone. From the stone it is easy to find the tomb.
There is very little left of the tomb but it seems to be perched on top of an unusual hill. There are the remains of a bank around it as well but this may be the remains of an old field system.

This tomb is situated on the bend of a track that can be clearly found on the OS map. The OS map suggests that you can possibly drive up the lane but there is a gate on it, so best to park outside. I met a guy who works on the land and he uses this lane in his landcruiser so try not and block it. The entrance to the lane comes after some turns on the main road coming from the rearcross direction.

According to the Archaelogical Inventory of County Carlow, item no. 317 at Rathgeran:
Enclosure (possible) Grass-covered bank of earth and stones, including some large slabs, several standing upright, curving W–N (C 52m; est. Diam of circle if complete c. 80m; enclosing summit of hill). 1-9-1987

Archaelogical Inventory of County Carlow.
The Government of Ireland (copyright)
ISBN 0 7076 0324 2

This site really needs to be properly surveyed and studied.

The Gwynedd Archaeological Trust replied to me today but could find no reference to this stone in their fieldnotes. They will add it to their database to check at a later date.

This wedge-tomb is just in off the road at a bad junction.

This standing stone is about 1.25m high with a peaked top. After the old houses on the OS map there is a gate. If you have a look over the ditch you can see the tree from the pictures attached.
As i was leaving on the road I found it unusual, Keeper Hill just appears over the hills in the background. Im not sure whether you can see it from the standing stone.

There is a track that leads up to the stones marked on the map. Its tricky enough to spot, basically a cattle crush is at the entrance(heap of gates to the lay man). Follow the track up to the end of it, you should be able to see them between the end of the track and the Mahurslieve. When I first saw them I thought it was a cracked standing stone. However it is two stones about 0.5m high lying up against each other.

Visited here yesterday 30/7/06 its my first visit this year and it distressed me to see how much this site has gone down since my last visit due to the mindlessness of some individuals.

This site has suffered badly from heavy excavation in the past and is hardly recognisable as to what it once was, now some idiots are causing whats left of it further distress.
Firstly theres 2 different rocks with names carved on.
Somebody has also been setting fires at the rear of the chamber and the worst damage i saw was somebody has taken a stone and pounded the spiral, i know the spiral isnt contemporary but theres no need to vandalise it further.

I remain in awe at the stupidity of individuals who cause damage like this.

I noticed this stone after I had staggered out the pub on the opposite side of the road to it.
I returned the next dayto make sure I hadn’t dreamt it.
The stone is approximately 2.5 metres tall and 1 metre across at its broadest point. The stone has been mounted into a recess on the corner of the road. The stone has ‘Langstane’ carved into it and is situated in Langstane Place.
What makes me think the stone may be prehistoric is that the base has been carved into a keel shape or a “rough beak” as Burl calls it. This is a common feature of the stones erected in Aberdeenshire Recumbent Stone Circles.
The stone isn’t featured in Canmore and I browsed through the local history sections of the nearby bookshops but could find no reference to the stone.

We hadn’t seen many of the Dunideer sites as mostly they’re pretty knocked about, but I had to see Stonehead, rearing up next to Dunideer hill. I wasn’t disappointed. This is a monster with a looming voice. The stones and the hill seem to be engaged in a quiet, whispered conversation.

You can drive all the way down the track to it, so is really good for those less able (or too goddamn lazy like me) to walk. The sun was shining and hot again, the bees buzzed in the thistles, a woodpecker joined us and we sat and marvelled at this perfect little circle, lovingly restored on its perfect flying saucer mound to welcome visitors. I sat and sketched. A perfect end to the day!

Foiled again, Moth! Moth has been trying to get here for years but has been consistently beaten back by cattle. Today, within sniffing distance there it was – this time we were held back by barley. There was no way we dared wade through that verdant crop against the tramlines. Very disappointed.

You can never predict how a site will make you feel. Memsie cairn is really quite simple to describe – a pile of stones. It has no entrance, no chamber to crawl into, no redeeming features other than it’s a huge pile of grey stones. But I loved it! Simple pleasures, eh.

As we parked it started to rain a few drops. But I was looking forward to this. The approach to it is marvellous, too. The overgrown track takes you up a hill, through a deep dark pine wood which softened the rain to mist and muffled our footfalls on the carpet of needles, then throws you out in the circle!

Wow! Wow! Damn the rain for coming now, for I would have liked to paint here, but at least I’ve seen it. The best bit is that thrillingly, the recumbent is a giant penis!

The rain was falling steadily. Dampened spirits? Not a chance. Cock on!

We asked at the farm, rather than at the cottage with nasty plastic swans in the garden. A friendly young man of dangerously fat proportions who was tinkering with a tractor in the yard told us it was OK to go in and have a look. He seemed quite pleased to have a visitor.

The circle is pretty trashed and looked shabby because for some reason it has recently been fenced off, so it hadn’t been grazed and was full of nasty weeds.

Moth really loved this, but I was really quite indifferent.

A whopping single standing stone in a tiny churchyard is all that is left of what was perhaps once a stone circle. This is one of those crazy stones that you don’t realise how tall it is until you stand right next to it and it towers above you!

The lane takes you right up to Thorax Farm and we could see from the map that the stone circle lies was just on the other side. We rang the farmhouse bell to ask permission, but there was no reply, so we parked sensibly and left a note in the window saying we had come to see the stone circle and set off through the farmyard complete with peacocks, llamas and horses.

As we walked up to the circle we could see people already in it, one of who was the farmer, a woman called Sandra.

The circle itself is lovely with a very small diameter and six good sized stones standing in a bank of rubbly cairn material. One stone is heavily cupped marked to the east.

She told us she was very proud of having her own stone circle and had taken the advice of Historic Scotland’s inspector and had got help to clear out the rubble dumped there over the years to reveal the original cairn platform.

Sandra’s attitude to her ownership of her stone circle was in complete contrast to the farmer we had met less than an hour before at Rothiemay.

She has a holiday let, called Antiquity Cottage which looked like a delightful retreat: The standing stone in front of the cottage is not prehistoric. It makes the resting place of her favourite old horse, Jim.

I was really looking forward to seeing this one as the sheer blocky bulk of the heavily cupmarked recumbent really appealed to me in papery TMA. But I didn’t dare enter the field though as there was a herd of cattle present complete with bull. Moth dared, but he runs faster than me. So I sat on the non-prehistoric stone gatepost to observe. Its flankers are gone but there are still four beautiful evenly placed stones of the circle still standing.

As I sat observing, the farmer drove up and stopped. “Just looking at your stone circle” I said. “That’s fine” he said, “but I don’t think anyone really owns a stone circle, do they. It’s just on my land.”

Just a little up the road from Loanhead of Daviot New Craig stone circle is just a recumbent and flankers. We couldn’t get to it as the field in front was inhabited by cattle with bulls. However, even from the road you could see just how huge the recumbent is and how these stones dominate the landscape.

In the care of historic Scotland this well-tended site was too well restored for my taste, but it was hot nevertheless. I loved the cremation site immediately next to the stone circle and one of the flankers looked like a gigantic penis.

Despite the tedious 20 minute walk up a stoney track to the site, it was worth the effort. What a name, what a place! It helped that as you walk you could see where you were going, as the stones stick up high out of the hilltop. And then you get there. There’s so much to see – both the site itself with lovely stones, a bit of cairn material, some woodland and fab views down to the airport. We spent ages quite alone here and I felt so relaxed that I lay down and went to sleep in the protective hollow in front of the recumbent. Delicious!

Very close to Auchquhorthies & Auld Bourtreebush this enjoys the same sightlines and atmosphere. It has four nice stones on a raised platform but there does seem to be something suspiciously wrong about it. Nevertheless, I liked it and access to it is so easy, it’s worth a look-see.

This pair of large stone circles (Auchquhorthies & Auld Bourtreebush) are clearly connected as they are little more than 200ms apart, but are definitely separate sites.

They’re both rather a jumble of stones, but there is lots to see and enough large tall stones still standing to help the viewer reconstruct the scale and importance of these sites.

Didn’t really enjoy it here, though. It may have been that there was a bull in the field.

Nice sea views!