Standing Stone (destroyed?): OS Grid Reference – NS 805 958
Archaeology & History
Nearly a hundred years ago Christina Buchan told the local writer Donald Morris (1935) about this seemingly forgotten and lost megalithic site. The narrative she gave told:
“I remember a stone which was known among the Causewayhead people as the Bel Stane. (The name is significant) It originally stood in the Doocot Park on Spittal Farm. This park overlooks the high road from Causewayhead to Bridge of Allan and adjoins the steading of Spittal… When the road leading up through the village of Causewayhead was formed (about 1820), the garden of William Robb’s cottage near the foot of the Broad Loan was somewhat altered in shape. He put up a new gate and, requiring a gatepost, he lifted the Bel Stane from Doocot Park and set it up at the front of his own house to support the gate. It was a stone of pillar-shape and stood four or five feet above the ground, and I do not remember whether they were any markings on it. The cottage became ruinous many years ago and the garden ran waste. A new house is now built on the site, but the Bel Stane has been lost.”
There is a possible contender for the lost Bel Stane, used again as another gatepost, on the south-side of the road some 450 yards to the east (at NS 80922 95931). The stone in question is somewhat fatter than usual gateposts, about four-feet tall, and has the eroded appearance of considerably greater age than many others. The monolith isn’t mentioned in the Royal Commission’s Stirlingshire inventory. Further information would be very welcome.
References:
- Morris, David, B., ‘Causewayhead a Hundred Years Ago’, in Transactions of the Stirling Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1935.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
