The stone is easily seen (on your right) when walking back from the circles towards the car park. There is no path to the stone and you have to jump over a low fence to get to it.
Although ignored by the other visitors today this is a fine stone with excellent sea views. Like most of the stones on Machrie Moor it is grooved by thousands of years of rain. The stone is approximately 1.5m high.
Hob will be pleased tp know that the wooden fence surrounding the memorial has already fallen to bits!
This stone is well worth checking out when visiting the more famous stone circles. It is only a short walk from the main track.
This is just about viewable from the path to the main concentration of stones. It's next to a modern memorial stone, the latter placed in memory of a fella who evidently loved the moor. Nice to think he's sort of joined the ancestral landscape in a way. Shame about the wooden fence erected around the modern thing detracts from the solitary ambience of the ancient stone, but a few thousand years of weathering may take care of that.
The old stone seems very much a solitary affair, and I certaintly couldn't see any trace of the remains of a circle which was once alleged to be here.
Near the celebrated stone circles on Mauchrie Moor, Arran, there is a cairn, partly demolished, which Fion-gal, the hero of Highland tradition, is said to have used as his justice-seat; and the stone, beside which the culprit stood - a huge block of red sandstone, is pointed out as the "Panel's Stone."
p30 of John McArthur's 'Antiquities of Arran' (1861).
I wonder which monument this applies to. It can't be Fingal's Cauldron Seat, surely, as simultaneously dishing out justice would give you indigestion. Perhaps this is the Panel Stone?
"In 1861, near it were several smaller stones, apparently fragments of larger ones, indicating the former existence of a stone circle. As he was unable to determine the centre of the circle, Bryce dug a trench at the W base of the stone, but no remains or signs of previous disturbance were seen."
However, later visits failed to find any of these smaller stones.
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