stolinskie

After today’s visit, I can add a bit more information to the West circle history [when I googled it, TMA was the top authority according to AI which shows what a bright future we are careering towards].

As you leave the road to go down to the farm, you pass a bungalow on your right, then there is the farmhouse, then there is the steading. The man in the farmhouse answered a knock and said that he owns the field with the Backhill of Drachlaw stone circle in it. Then there’s the steading which is still owned by Mr Sutton, who Drewbhoy met, he wasn’t in at the time of my visit. The various stones which have been found recently have now been erected in a rough circle next to the ones in the dyke, see photos. The farmer added there had been people down surveying last week, so perhaps that was Hysteric Scotland.

It’s notable that there are so many ancient monuments in such a small area – Cairn Riv, West of Drachlaw, Backhill of Dracklaw and the Shielmuir stone in immediate proximity, then nearby Newton Of Fortrie and Milnbank/Hill Of Laithers, plus a little bit further away RSCs such as Pitglassie, Mains of Hatton and Corrydown. The venerable Pratt said back in 1901 that Cairn Riv marks a former boundary between Banffshire and Aberdeenshire, and Turriff and Inverkeithny. That makes sense when you go down the hill to the Deveron, it is indeed a natural border.

I have to say after today’s visit and seeing that the stones in Backhill, West and Cairn Riv all have seams of quartz, I wonder if they were originally all parts of one megacircle. Also if they were marking a boundary, surely something should have been up on the top of Drachlaw Hill, perhaps the Drach Law itself, now ploughed out?

Final comment, in today’s light, Cairn Riv seemed more like an erratic to worship than a former recumbent, with an excellent face on its side.

There are two big stones here and lots of smaller ones under the grass. The big two are mysterious. They hang out in a bit of scrub at the top of an egg-shaped (ie ancient) field, before Clune Woods starts. Locally they are known as Pattenbringan. Trove records them as Pittenbrinzean. There used to be a manor house adjacent, lived in by an Ogilvy and then a Gordon, but no trace of it remains. Did the two stones used to be part of a stone circle? Possibly. The location feels right for it.

To get there, you can walk up from Lintmill through the trees beside the road until you get to a gate. There’s also just about enough room at the side of the gate to park there. There’s a track which heads up the hill and when it opens up into an area there’s a track down again, and then a scramble over to the scrubland. You can also walk up the side of the barley field but there’s quite a lot of intruding gorse.

Drew – interested to see what you make of these two stones. Coles thought they were part of something, Blood did not.

Visited February 2026

After reading the previous reports from Drew and Carl about the demon undergrowth at this site, I was prepared for battle, although the indefatigable Jamie Swanson had commented recently on facebook that he had done a bit of pruning.

I passed the possible site of the stone circle, then turned left and parked in a little layby which seems to be mostly used nowadays for dumping trash. I considered walking back along the road then headed into the woods instead, where I quickly found myself trapped between gorse and fallen trees. My heroic expedition continued for about 15 minutes (see map image), until I got to a field which was full of sheep watching me. I thought I could see the bit of gorse I needed to get to, but I then heard a burn, so I went to look at that. There is quite a substantial bridge over the burn for the road (see pic), and I imagine that is where the majority of the stone circle went.

I turned around after my bridge discovery and the sheep had moved closer as a block. I def now could see where I thought the circle was, a gorsey area on a rise next to the road, so instead of heading towards it I retreated back through the woods to find the road. From the road you can see the sea, and combined with the burn the spot makes sense as opposed to being a place in the middle of nowhere next to a trash recycling plant.

I walked round by road only to discover there’s a gate right next to the site and even more than that you can actually see two big rocks in the gorse from the road! Thanks Jamie S. for revealing them. The two big stones looked lovely but I didn’t go any closer, having fulfilled my gorse quote for the day already. I would recommend parkign where I parked but walking round strictly by road. I did see a treecreeper though.

Leaving the site I went on to Lower Tynet farm, where they have a fully automated 24 hour shop! Kinda like FEBO in the Netherlands!! So if you are driving on the nearby A road, remember you can always get eggs or milk there, no matter what the time.

“Their present unsightly condition is but another instance of the deplorable want of respect for megalithic remains which has been so prevalent throughout these northern agricultural districts” – said Fred. R. Coles in 1906 -journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/7055

This circle is in a magnificent spot atop a small hill roughly equidistant between Mither Tap and Tap o’Noth. So no wonder the Picts marked an already ancient stone, they must’ve loved this place as a prominent point between two forts, especially ift hey used beacons. I figure an ancient track went past it, and it was probably quite the highway back in the day.

It’s a real shame that a bunch of heathens has tried so hard to blow up the recumbent, it looks a bit sad now, all angular at the ends and yet still unbroken in spirit. Ritchie was already commenting on this attempted idiocy in 1909, so it’s not recent damage. I would blame the ancient landowner but Welfare mentions shepherds who used the recumbent as the back of an almighty fireplace for boiling tar!? I really don’t know why you would do that at the top if a hill, but the stones still standing in the RSC do bear black marks :(

The fallen stones at the circle are a blend of field collection, a possible inner cairn and probably a few fallen orthostats. As my pix show, there’s a stone in the ground halfway between the circle and the outliers, plus another possible outlier at the edge of the trees. The pinky sunset was lush!

Wow it’s bloomin amazing. It’s huge!! The ceiling is composed of massive hunks of pink granite. This was no fridge, don’t make me laugh. This was a supercool hidey hole for giants playing hide and seek. That much is obvious.

Parking is bad, if that’s because the Brownies have cultivated a former layby on the other side of the road then shame on the Brownies, I hope they grow up to realise the error of their ways. But the souterrain itself is just wonderful. I could even stand up at the end! Which put my head amongst the resident flies, an unexpected pleasure in late November.

After an interesting presentation of the Inveravon Pictish Stones – the church is heading into community ownership apparently and the mound above the stones has never been excavated – we thought a quick visit to Lagmore East would work out before it rained, and it did.

The gate to the field can be opened and we respectfully saluted the sheepies. On looking at HER, it’s claimed this is a clava cairn, I’m not sure about that there’s not really enough left to see. There’s also supposed to be another fallen stone with cupmarks which was not visible under the turf.

We discussed how it’s kind of odd that one of the remaining stones looks rectangular and pretty easy to repurpose as a lintel, but it wasn’t looted. Our last theory: this was an unfinished circle and never had a full complement of stones.

I was exploring the most excellent Cruickshank Botanic Gardens when I saw the mound and knew I had to investigate. What a great location next to the Don, it seems notable that St. Machar’s Cathedral was plonked close to it. The HER link tells about the recent excavations.

Just as some of the previous commentators have said, I’ve had varied reactions to this stone circle. One time before I didn;t really like it at all, possibly because the sight lines are blocked by trees. This time round visiting with two friends, I quite enjoyed myself. Do wish I’d stood in the middle of the cairn and will have to do that next time.

The split recumbent is a good conversation point, as is the alleged line of cupmarks on a stone, we could only find two. There are three different info boards now, the old one at the entrance saying 312 burials, the new one inside saying 31? I do like the burial cist board with the three ravers, hands in the air and feathers in the hair giving it their all for the DJ.

However, I remain slightly annoyed by the recent gravestone right at the northwest edge of the site, just inside the fallen fence. I’m also a bit annoyed that it irks me, but it’s not cool. There’s a small headstone and two flower pots. “E. Garland 1941-2014” – is it a former akela? I normally don’t like this form of argument but ... what if everyone did this? I wouldn’t mind a plaque on a tree outside the field or ashes being scattered, and yes it does seem to be a site which had a funerary function, but a gravestone right on the edge of the scheduled monument is just disrespectful for me. The lack of prior mention makes me think it hasn’t been there long, although I did see it last year already.

As a final point, there’s a pile of stones in the southern corner of the field which I felt drawn to. When you go stand on them, it might actually be bedrock. If the grass was stripped off and everywhere was bedrock this site would have a very different feel, it would be a lot more brutal.

Visited today, 150925.

This is the first RSC I visited, around 2020. It’s a beautiful site now – impressive after what it’s been through, yet also understandable because it’s such a fantastic location. The stones are on the small side, but the framing of being set amongst the hills is overwhelmingly impressive.

It is def one of my fave sites and I was happy to go there recently with two friends who also loved it. They couldn’t get over how much the recumbent looks like a whale and also pondered hard over how the stone got there. Hopefully they are now also stoneheads!

I joined an archaeological dig close to here which has been investigating another site with possible usage back to the neolithic. In time I’ll log that but perhaps it’s best kept unmentioned for now since the dig is ongoing – happy to share details privately.

Afterwards I decided go for a walk on the hill and “discovered” the maiden castle [hahaha] whilst checking out the graveyard structure which is basically next to it. The wall of that can now easily be seen from the footpath since the (plantation) trees have been chopped down. If you make your way over the logging destruction, then you’ll see the “castle” behind it marked by a ring of mighty beech trees. I guess it was a dun which has been looted over time?

Maiden’s Castle is a great location, was cool to stumble across it. The mysteries of Bennachie are plentiful!]

” Apart from evidence of non-ferrous metalworking, a piece of early medieval decorated glass and a glass bead, there are three radiocarbon dates from contexts below and above the inner rampart, and beneath the wall of the circular internal building, all of them falling in the range of AD 410-640. ” -hillforts.arch.ox.ac.uk/records/SC2962.html

To my surprise, the church is now a home! Didn’t meet anyone on my visit but also didn’t enter the former churchyard. I found the smaller of the two stones then walked around like an idiot looking for the big one for a while until I went back to my car and it was right next to it :)

Reminds me of a pleasant afternoon spent with a pal in Kent looking for Wayland’s Smithy, let’s just say sometimes the stones can lead us on a merry old dance.

After sitting in the sunshine for a while absorbing the lessons of Old Keig RSC, I decided to give myself another chance to find Cothiemuir Wood circle. I had stupidly managed to come out without both a charged phone and a OS map, so I was a bit in the dark. I’d already got as far as the sign off the road for the natural burial site, which since it used an image of the recumbent and flankers was probably a fair bet, so I went back towards Cothiemuir from Old Keig (which is pretty close) and impulsively decided to park on an unused track just off the road at the bend before the burial site turnoff. I wandered up though lovely trees and suddenly spied a flanker standing tall!

It’s a beautiful site, nowadays standing in an area of chopped trees, funny how that really changes things in photos but in reality it probably always had a great ambience. Trees still visible and of course the hill, not the water – I always forget to look for the water, which is often nearby. Of course that was down the hill beside the road and the old granary.

The flankers were great! They are pink granite and very impressive in person. The recumbent is huge and had a mad face in it. I was at first puzzled by the slab in the middle with burnt wood nestling underneath it, but that of course was the cist.

I had been there for a while when two other people appeared, which made me realise how lucky I am in Aberdeenshire to mostly have circles to myself. Still I didn’t mind to share the space since I was thinking to head off; we said hello and one woman chatted with me about stone circles. She seemed quite knowledgeable so I enquired if she knew this website and she said she doesn’t really use the internet which I have to admit surprised me.

In this day and age, I’d find it very hard to research sites without this site and the internets more broadly. She told me she was a therapist and perhaps unsurprisingly she then told me the stones have healing properties – I don’t necessarily disagree. In her opinion, Cothiemuir has a gentle healing energy, Old Keig more aggressive, Sunhoney is the best for healing, Monymusk is for making decisions, Midmar has hard energy, Aikey Brae is a good one as is Berrybrae.

This made me wonder if my habit of trying to see two or three RSCs in an afternoon is the right approach; I do remember having a very nice relaxing time at Sunhoney and I would say Midmar once felt pretty scary visiting at midnight, however I also do think we all take (and give) different things to the stones. In any case it was an interesting spring equinox conversation. She told me confidently that the beautiful flankers had been quarried at Bennachie and most neighbouring stone circles had some pink in them. I do hope the two women had a great healing sesion after I left. I certainly enjoyed finding Cothiemuir and next time I’d park at the burial site, which is I think is probably what they did.

What a cracker of a monument!! I’ve tried to find this a few times and finally succeeded on the spring equinox. As others have noted, the setting is sublime and despite only the recumbent and flankers remaining, it’s a stunning site, with the view down to Dunnideer castle and the way the hill drops away.

I hadn’t seen Stoneheid’s message so I parked on the road just off the junction, which seemed out of the way enough to me then walked down and hopped the rickety gate.

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.

I came up through rhododendron bushes from the Foulford Bridge cairn, a route which I would not recommend. Better to come on the track from the bridge and then climb a quick steep ascent.

Garrrr this one was a nightmare, the rhododendron bushes have completely taken over (see pix) so I got close to it but didn’t see anything :(

Found this cairn quite easily following a mossy track off from the main way at the Foulford bridge. This is the closest one to the bridge. The pheasant prison is gone! Just the foundations remain. The cairn will outlast us all.

I went to Forgue and parked at the Walter Scott hall (in use but closed when I was there). I walked up past the school and into the woods. On reflection, it seems a strange place to put a school – right up a hill on the edge of a village – but I suppose back in the day there were a lot of kids coming down the hill from crofts and farms, unlike today. As a sidenote, there are two churches in Forgue and they are both placed on gorgeous sites across the burn from each other and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are built on top of more ancient monuments.

It was a nice walk up the hill through the trees, beech and pine. I walked past the “turn off” over the fence to Raich stone circle, which I visited on the way back. I carried on up the track with trees on one side and fields on the other, until using the OS app it was judged time to take a right down a track, sticking to the countours of the hill. This led me along a winding path until the OS app told me i was next to the circle, so I advanced 5 metres into a mess of fallen trees and torn up earth (see pix). Checked the app again, turned round and the quartz encrusted stone was right behind me! I was excited at first because I thoguht it was a massive chunk of quartz (as at Auchmaliddie, which I’d love to visit), but having look at the other pix here it seems to only have a wee bit on top. Pretty though and interesting that there was similar rock at Raich nearby.

But yeah the site was an impenetrable, indecipherable mess, with trees blocking everything from access to view. Frankly I see this as the responsibility of the land owner to sort out since they should be maintaining an ancient monument on “their” land. I don’t think these trees came down that recently and I noticed the track was being kept clear in any case, so there are people about. To sum up: I found the three stones of the smashed recumbent with difficulty, had a picnic, it started raining, I left. And that was it.

I’ve been meaning to check out this mound a while and today was the day. After long deliberations, I decided that the layby just by the bridge down from Nether Blairock farmhouse was ok to park in since it’s not a passing place. I def think about these things too much, but on the flipside I’d also be mortified if I parked somewhere that was in the way.

I went under the bridge and up the burn, coz I do loves a bit of stream exploration. Underneath it’s obvious that the bridge is doubled, presumably from when they widened the turnpike. Half stream walking, half following the deer tracks, I ended up at the base of the mound next to a badger latrine.

The mound seen up close is impressive and certainly man-made. It’s steep climb to the top, although not a long one because it’s only 8m high (3m from the field beside it). Did people live there? It seems small for that, but Dunadd also seemed small and that was centre of a kingdom back in the day! Now sitting peaceful in the trees beside the B-road, the mound would have had a commanding position over the turning to Kirkton of Deskford. In 2019, a core sample was taken and it was dated to between 386 BC and 206 BC.

A colleague suggested that the people who lived here then moved on to build Inaltry Castle, I’m not sure about that because there’s also Davie’s Castle (a hillfort) nearby and this place seems more ceremonial than a defended citadel. It’s also pretty close to the Deskford ritual centre, where the carnyx was found. In any case, it proved a lovely short visit which cheered me right up on a crispy October day in 2024.

Visited in November 2024, when access was quite easy becuase the crop (barley?) had been harvested. The stones seemed a bit sad and neglected, but as others have said, wow what a stunning location.

It must’ve been around 2019 that I was here. As others have said, it’s an impressive site in terms of size and feeling in spite of a drab location.

I went here in late 2024 – it’s a cool site which was fairly easy to find using the OS map, although of course I ended up on the wrong side of the burn and had to scale the steepest edge. The problem is that so many of the trees have now fallen over that it’s impenetrable. I couldn’t even walk around the ditch completely. In a way that’s nature at work, in a way it’s a shame to see an ancient site becoming inaccessible. Of course on a longer time scale it doesn’t matter, the trees will prob all be gone in decades!

I love going to ancient sites and experiencing what happens when I get there (if I get there). Sometimes as with Castle Rigg, I am left underwhelmed and thinking it probably wasn’t the right time to visit; on the flipside, my visit to Upper Lagmore came exactly at the right and put me in a good mood for 2025. Then there’s a place like Avebury that just gets better on every visit!

Whilst poking around at Lagmore East, I spied Upper Lagmore up the hill and worked out a possible route. I ended up walking back past my car parked in the golf club / distillery car park, up a small track over the burn and then going down the minor road looking for a way over the barbed wire fence. I hopped it down at the field corner by the A road then zigzagged up the hill.

When I got to the site, I felt watched and was quite confused trying to work out what exactly I was looking at, thinking it must have been a place that had been used and re-used. Then the clouds cleared and wow! a rainbow came out. I wandered from stone to stone, appreciating its location in the landscape. The surrounding hills are beautiful and you can’t see the river but you know it’s near. Plus there’s a great view down to East Lagmore – I imagined (without evidence) that there was probably another stone circle somewhere previously, perhaps up the hill where now a derelict farmhouse stands, or perhaps past East Lagmore at the hunting lodge.

An amazing place!

Lovely hill, extremely windy when I went up in December. I ascended up a path from the quarry side and beside a gate saw a bunch of stones which seemed to me could well be a former stone circle, although I cannot find anything on the old maps to confirm that. The stones are piled up at 57.664767, -2.715907.

As an aside I was using peakfinder.com to identify the hills I could see, what a great tool!

I went there the other day, have to say there isn’t much to see. There’s some trees fallen over on top of the cairn, which seems like it could be two ring cairns rather than a long cairn. Whilst some cairns are quite impressive, this one is rather hidden away in the gorse.