Dane’s Stone

Nearest town:
Pitlochry (1km S)
OS reference:
NN942594
OS sheets:
52, 53
Latitude:
56° 42' 51.35 N
Longitude:
3° 43' 43.22 W
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Dane’s Stone

The Dane’s Stone collapses

nickbrand
nickbrand Feb 6, 2014

After standing for almost 6,000 years, a monument in Highland Perthshire has been felled by the weather.

Days of heavy rain proved to be too much for the Dane’s Stone, which is believed to date back to the neolithic era or Bronze Age. The megalith succumbed to the wet conditions and toppled over.....

Link to the news story in The Courier

Dane’s Stone

C
CARL Jul 30, 2012

Visited 16.6.12

This 2 metre tall stone is easy to visit via a metal gate in the corner of the field.

The stone is covered in lichen.

If you would rather not risk the ire of a farmer the stone is easily seen from the road.

Dane’s Stone

nickbrand
nickbrand May 30, 2004

Field was empty and only grass growing yesterday, so took some pictures of the stone from round about it, rather than just from the fence. Interesting texture on the stone.

Dane’s Stone

Martin
Martin Apr 20, 2002

Danes Stone (AKA Pitfourie)
Friday 5/4/02
In the last street in Moulin before the fields and forest of Craigower Hill stands this monolith called the Danes Stone. This whinstone block is just over 2 m high and aligned approximately E/W. Apparently several more stones are said to have stood here and are supposed to be half buried in the field, but the OS did a careful examination and no such stones were found.

Folklore

Dane’s Stone
Standing Stone / Menhir
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Jun 30, 2023

The field on which the [annual ploughing match of the Moulin Agricultural Association] took place was a nice slope below Baledmund House, on Pitfourie Farm, kindly granted for the occasion by Mr Charles McLauchlan, tenant of the farm. At the south end of the field stands an old monolith which has long been an object of historic interest and conjecture. This large upright block is believed to be a very old Druidical stone, which probably marked the burial ground of some ancient Pictish chief.

The ground in the neighbourhood of the stone was at one time the site of Moulin Market, which lasted for a week, and this stone was known in Gaelic as “The stone of the bargains,” as when a bargain was concluded it was usual to shake hands across the stone, no doubt following some custom that has been lost in the mists of antiquity.

A little to the west of the stone is a knoll on which a few larch trees are growing, and which is known in Gaelic as “The knoll of the cattle,” where the cattle were herded on the occasion of a market. An examination of this knoll, however, a few years ago showed that it was chiefly artificial, and that it had formed the site of an old fortified dwelling. The artificial mound is about ten feet high, having a breadth of about forty feet, and the top had at one time been surrounded by a palisade.

The ‘Carn a’ Mheanbh-Cruidh’ is marked on Canmore’s map, though there’s no recent investigation of it to fix a date to it. I’d like to think the origin of the name is a bit more ancient and romantic than just sticking cows on it on market day (surely a trickier plan than popping them in a pen on flat ground). Mentioned in the Perthshire Advertiser, March 4th 1914.

Sites within 20km of Dane’s Stone

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