Images

Image of Glebe Stone (Standing Stones) by Martin

29/11/03- the top with Warrior’s Rest cottage and standing stone behind

Image of Glebe Stone (Standing Stones) by Martin

29/11/03- close up of Eastern face with natural and man-made cup markings

Articles

Glebe Stone

Saturday 29/11/03
Between the stone at Warrior’s Rest and the Yarrow Stone stands this monolith in a field of sheep. By now I’m soaked through, my CANMORE notes are rapidly turning to paper mache, my OS map is wringing and my camera is in danger of shorting due to the condensation and rain! This is a massive stone- biggest of the three in this area. It’s about 1.3 metres high, almost the same wide and about 40 cm thick. Around the base of the stone are many small stones and boulders which look like field clearance. Towards the bottom of the eastern side are two cup-like marks- one of which is natural, one of which is classically man-made looking. To the ENE I can see a monlolith through the rain, to the WSW another….

Folklore

Glebe Stone
Standing Stones

On more than twenty different spots of this moor were large cairns, in many of which fine yellow dust, and in one of which an old spear head, was found. Two unhewn massive stones still stand, about 100 yards distant from each other, which doubtless are monuments of the dead. The real tradition simply bears that here a deadly feud was settled by dint of arms: the upright stones mark the place where the two lords or leaders fell, and the bodies of their followers were thrown into a marshy pool called the Dead Lake, in the adjoining haugh. It is probable that this is the locality of “the Dowie Dens of Yarrow.”

About 300 yards westward, when the cultivation of this moor began, the plough struck upon a large flat stone of unhewn greywacke bearing a Latin inscription. Bones and ashes lay beneath it, and on every side the surface presented verdant patches of grass. It was examined by Sir Walter Scott, Dr John Leyden, Mungo Park, and others of antiquarian lore. From the rudeness and indistinctness of the carving upon the hard rock, only the following characters can be deciphered--
“Hic memoria et... hic jacent in tumulo duo filii liberali.”

It’s slightly curious that the RCAHMS records don’t give the latter Yarrow Stone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to a possible prehistoric origin. From ‘Reminiscences of Yarrow’ by James Russell (2nd edition, 1894).

Miscellaneous

Glebe Stone
Standing Stones

The stones around the base of this monolith are supposedly the remains of a cairn, of which twenty or so were found in the vicinity. The cairn contained ‘part of an old iron spear’. None of these cairns remain.

Sites within 20km of Glebe Stone