Kipps

Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech
Destroyed
NS998730
Disputed

Nearest town:

Linlithgow (4km NNW)

OS reference:

NS998730

OS sheet:

Latitude:

55° 56' 22.19 N

Longitude:

3° 36' 15.58 W

Added to TMA by

Corbie

Fieldnotes (1)
Folklore (1)
Miscellaneous (3)
Links (1)

Articles

Kipps

Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

Corbie Jan 29, 2004

Described as a druidic temple on old maps, later as a cromlech (1891). It does not appear on present day O.S. maps.

Originally consisting of three stones supporting a larger fourth that was apparently broken before 1698. In its original form it is compared with the Chun Quoit in Cornwall.

Ratcliffe Barnett T in 1943 states that the cromlech was set within a stone circle. Unfortunately, he does not state his source and there is certainly no indication of a stone circle today.

This site is pretty neglected and a bit overgrown with rank grasses. It is also seems a wee bit lost in terms of location although I can’t explain why. It may be that the surrounding landscape may have been cleared of woodland and more open at the time of building or maybe it is the absence of other ancient features nearby.

Source: West Lothian District Council (198?) The Bathgate Hills, Robert MacLehose & Co. Ltd. Scotland

Source Ratcliffe Barnett T. (1943) Border By-Ways & Lothian Lore, John Grant Booksellers Ltd, Edinburgh

Kipps

Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

Corbie Jan 29, 2004

It is said that local lads and lassies used to plight their troth by clasping hands through the gap made by the two pieces of the split, top boulder.

Source: West Lothian District Council (198?), The Bathgate Hills, Robert MacLehose & Co. Ltd., Scotland

Kipps

Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

Rhiannon Oct 16, 2006

Sir James Young Simpson, as long ago as 1861, said, “Almost all the primaeval stone circles and cromlechs which existed in the middle and southern districts of Scotland have been cast down and removed. . . . In the beginning of the eighteenth century Sir Robert Sibbald states that near the Kipps cromlech was a circle of stones with a large stone or two in the middle, and he adds, ‘many such may be seen all over the country.’ They have all disappeared, and but lately the stones of the Kipps circle have been themselves removed and broken up, to build, apparently, some neighbouring field walls, though there was abundance of stones in the vicinity equally well suited for the purpose.”
Anniversary address to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, January, 1861. (Proceedings, vol.iv.p.48.)

The Stone Circles of Scotland
A. L. Lewis
The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 30. (1900), pp. 56-73.

(perhaps this is the source that Crombie (above)’s author was referring to? The last sentence is rather interesting, suggesting a definite anti stance against the stones, rather than just a disinterested one bent on wall building?)

Kipps

Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

wideford Jan 29, 2004

RCAHMS NMRS record no. NS97SE 17 has this site at NS991739 and it is now put down to a shattered glacial boulder with the nearby circles as merely erratics . Of course they could be wrong .

Kipps

Dolmen / Quoit / Cromlech

Corbie Jan 29, 2004

The nearby steading known as “Kipps”. may take its name from the nearby cromlech as it is derived from the Gaelic “ceap” which literally translates into either “block” or “cap”.

Source: Wilkinson, John Garth (1992), West Lothian Place Names, Torphin House, Harburn, West Lothian, EH55 8RT