Broomend of Crichie Circle henge View all content for Broomend of Crichie

(visited 29 June 00) Beside a dual carriageway, behind a BP petrol station there's a field containing a 30 metre circular bank and ditch, causewayed to the north and south. On an island in the middle are three stones. It's a puzzling site. The stones are clearly not edge-on like circle stones; perhaps they have been moved, perhaps they are a 'cove'. Difficult to tell how many (if any) stones are missing. One stone has a beautiful Pictish bird-thing carved into it. I'm told that it was once a circle, and that the pictish stone was moved from its original site in the 19th century and put here for want of anywhere better. About 100 metres due south in the same field is a single stone. Another 100 metres beyond (over a road and through a hedge into someone's garden) is another stone. Beyond that (as far as I can tell from the map) by another 200 metres is another, but it's in the grounds of Broomend paper mill, a big fuckoff factory. I'm told that these stones were once part of a long alignment running from the river up to the henge and then beyond, in a manner similar to Shap in the English Lake District (Modern Antiquarian, page 250). Whether the north-south alignment of the causeway and the missing stones is due to the seasons and compass or the north-south alignment of the river is a matter for conjecture. The mill, road, petrol station, flats and houses around this field are all clearly very recent. The fact that the three outliers are on three separate properties doesn't bode well for their safe upkeep. The way it's been so rapidly surrounded with such overpoweringly intense development, I'll be surprised if the field itself is still a field in twenty years time.

Posted by Merrick 7th August 2000ce

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