Cup-Marked Stone: OS Grid Reference – NN 92774 27569
Also Known as:
- Buchanty Hill
The minor road that runs roughly north-south between the hamlets of Fowlis Wester and Buchanty is probably your best bet. Nearly 2 miles north of the village up the tiny winding lane, where the moorland at the roadside finishes and the fields begin – is where to take the track, left, up onto the hillside. But after just 75 yards, go left over the rickety-gate and follow the walling until your reach the burn. Follow this up all the way to its source (it’s boggy as hell) and, once you’re there, walk due north for 250 yards until you reach a cluster of rocks. Look around!
Archaeology & History
It’s a long way to come to see such a simplistic design —but for the real petroglyph researchers among you, it’s worth it the trek. It’s had scant attention. George Currie (2004) seems to have been the only person to mention this stone, giving the standard bland description typifying archaeology. He wrote:
“SE-facing slope, 1.2m long pointed rock aligned E-W; three shallow cups, 30-40 x 6-10mm.”
Inspiring stuff, ey?! Anyhow… As usual, there’s more to it than that. If we assume that the carving described above is the same one I visited yesterday (Mr Currie’s grid-ref is slightly different), even despite the poor daylight, it was obvious there was more than three cup-marks on this.
When I got to this stone, the evening sun was literally touching the horizon and so the light cutting across half the rock highlighted very little indeed. I was rushing, trying to fondle and see as much as I could before the darkening sky clouded everything, and as I almost frenetically sprayed showers of water across its surface, the two or three cups that I could see near the crown of the stone suddenly doubled in number. Two cups along one edge became three; whilst the sloping surface above these that had one cup suddenly seemed to have a companion. On the highest part of this gently sloping stone, the form of one of the two distinct cup-marks that first caught my eye seemed to slowly morph into one of the carved “footprint” designs, akin to those clustered on the Ardoch (2) carving 1½ miles south-west of here. However, this element needs looking at again, as it may have been a curious playful trick between stone and light showing me something that wasn’t there! Things like that happen with stones.
Altogether there are at least six cup-marks on here, but perhaps as many as eight. Obviously, if we (or you) visit the site when the light is much better, an even larger design might emerge from this old rock.
I spent perhaps just five minutes here, before heading back down to meet my companion 500 yards below in the midst of the boggy moorland. Usually a carving gets my fondles for a an hour or two, but conditions weren’t good for us to form a healthy relationship. And so, as I headed downhill, another unrecorded cup-marked stone appeared beneath my rushing feet (Stroness [3] carving)— and I spoke with that for only a couple of minutes. We need to come back up here and zigzag to find other companions that lay sleeping, forgotten for countless centuries…
References:
- Currie, George, ‘Buchanty Hill (Fowlis Wester parish): Cup-marked Rocks’, in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, volume 5, 2004.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian
