So Craigroy is the farm next door (with an impressively large recumbent stone next to the road) and this site is actually on the land of Haugh Farm. I was lucky enough to have an introduction to the farmers, who were happy to show me the stones and at the same time ensure their dogs didn’t eat me :) They said they hadn’t thought much about the provenance of the stones and guessed maybe they were Pictish, so I was happy to tell them the little I knew about bronze age burials. Lovely people. After later researching the site as I enjoy doing, I’ve sent them some links and told them about the excellent NLS maps service.
Having just read Richard Hayman’s excellent ‘Riddles in Stone’ it really tickles me how he says that people are wont to interpret ancient sites in the way that fits their own world view. So for example classical scholars saw stone circles in the light of Athenian temples, and I see sites as possible rave venues. This small grave is in a beautiful location near to the River Avon as it surges down to the Spey.
Canmore says this is a burial cist marked by the three stones and I interpret that as the excavators leaving the three standing as markers, because I’ve never seen a cist like that before. It also occurs to me it’s a small burial site and perhaps many sites like this have been destroyed over the years. It’s currently listed here as a bank barrow, which seems unlikely because it is so small.