Visited 17.02.24
I’ve passed by The Witching Stone countless times, however, the field was usually in crop or I was on my way to somewhere. Yesterday, while travelling home from a Bill Bailey concert, I noticed that the field enclosing The Witching Stone was being drained so it seemed like a good opportunity to finally visit the standing stone.
My first difficulty was finding a place to park on the busy A77. After some trial and error I parked down the track to the cottages S of the Old Alginate factory at Dipple. The lane is a high tide detour off the Ayrshire Coastal Path. There is room to park just beyond the cottages. The track leads onto the beach. After following the coast S for c. 0.5 mile I headed to a gate in the NW corner of the field. The Witching Stone was c. 150 yards SE from the gateway across a sodden field (I had wellies on obviously).
The Witching Stone, as it is known locally, is a natural pointed boulder leaning c. 30 degrees SE. It is set upright with broad sides on a NE-SW axis. The stone measures c. 4 x 3 x 1 feet. The overall height is reduced to c. 3.5 feet by the lean. It is located at NS 19924 01730 (transcribed from OS Aerial Mapping).
There is no obvious reason why this rather ordinary stone has been preserved in the field. It is not listed on Canmore and a Google search for Witching Stone Girvan produced no relevant result.