If you can make your way to the Stroness (2) carving, then walk down the slope for less than 50 yards past quite a few other earthfast stones, you’ll eventually run into the stone shown here in the photos. You’ll find it easily enough.
Archaeology & History
This carving was found when I was heading down the hillside to meet up with my antiquarian colleague 500 yards lower down. The sun was just setting, so visibility wasn’t good, but as I rushed from stone to stone feeling each one in the hope of finding a carving, this one gave my fingers that distinct feedback of a cup-marking; then another; and what seemed like another. I had a small amount of water left in a bottle and quickly sprayed it over the surface of the stone and saw that there were indeed a number of cups on it. Two or three certainly – but possibly as many as five. I laid on the wet ground and looked across its even surface from several angles and caught what seemed to be a very faint semi-circle around one of the cups. But I wasn’t sure it was real. However, on a number of quick photos I took, several of them do appear to show such an arc around one of the cups. But I’m very cautious about it. Only when we (or you) go back up and have a look at it in good light will we be able to affirm or discount it.
One additional feature that needs mentioning is a small low arc of walling just above this stone. It’s man-made, it’s very old, but I couldn’t work out what it might be: hut circle, cairn (there’s one further up the hill), enclosure walling. I’m not sure, but it needs to be looked at when we have a full day.
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.
Lower cups & upper cups
Cups on top
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.
Take the same direction as if you’re visiting the Ardoch (2) carving, starting from the Foulford golf course on the A822, roughly halfway between Gilmerton and the entrance to the Sma’ Glen. From here, take the track eastwards into the hills and literally ¾-mile along you reach the pylon; keep going along the same track for another 200 yards and on your left watch out for the track-cum-footpath going up the slope past Ardoch (2), onto the hilltop, then through the gate and down the path northeast for about ⅔-mile until you reach the burn. Keep going uphill for 80 yards and through the cronky gate, head 70 yards to your left to the large single rounded boulder.
Archaeology & History
Main scatter of cups
One of several petroglyphs in the area, this is the most notable in terms of its size. It rests just below the two Stroness hut circles which sit on the small level piece of ground nearly 100 yards further up the slope. A considerable scatter of cup-marks cover much of the upper surface of the boulder, some faint, some not so faint, with a number of them painted in a slight cover of lichens at the topmost section of the rock. The carving was first described somewhat blandly by George Currie (2004), who simply wrote:
“Large boulder, 2 x 2m, just W of hut circles; 16+ cups, 40–50 x 14–20mm.”
Faint line near the edge
Cups among the lichens
It’s actually south of the hut circles; and there are certainly more than sixteen cup-marks, as the photos here indicate. At the time of my visit here recently, the sun was falling and was just below the level that permitted a perfect highlighting of the cup-marks, but there seemed to be at least 25 of them, scattered in no particular order over much of its upper surface. One curiosity that seemed apparent was a long carved line running along a long slender edge along on the southern side of the stone, from a large cup-mark down to near the southwestern edge, meeting another smaller cupmark. I not 100% certain that it’s actually been carved and it may just be one of Nature’s scratches along the rock, but it does seem to have that “man-made” stamp on it. Another visit in differing light will show us one way or the other.
References:
Currie, George, ‘Buchanty Hill (Fowlis Wester parish): Cup-marked Rocks’, in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, volume 5, 2004.
If you’re coming here you’re obviously making a day out of it! You’ll be taking the shortest route to the Ardoch (2) petroglyph, via the Foulford golf course along the A822, roughly halfway between Gilmerton and the entrance to the Sma’ Glen. From here, take the track eastwards into the hills, and literally ¾-mile along you reach the pylon; keep along the same track for another 200 yards and on your left watch out for the track-cum-footpath going up the slope past the petroglyph, onto the hilltop, then through the gate and down the path for about ⅔-mile until you reach the burn. On the other side, go through the gate and 100 yards uphill through another one, walk immediately to your left alongside the fence. About 20 yards from the wall, look at the ground. Zigzag about!
Archaeology & History
Two distinct but very overgrown hut circles sit next to each other on the first ridge above the burn. When they were first built—sometime in the Bronze Age most likely—the landscape here was slightly different to what we see today. Scattered woodland of hazel, birch and Scots pine lived all across these hills and the small burn 100 yards below would have been much faster flowing, with trout and smaller fish in plentiful supply. The large cup-marked stone between the burn and these huts would have had some magico-religious meaning to the people living here. Indeed, it may have been carved by the people who built the huts, or they might have rested here due to its presence. I point out these simple ingredients to give a little more life to a site which, today, seems so isolated, lonely and unimpressive. It’s essential that we paint the history of this and all our ancient monuments with the colourful shades they lived within: of the forests and their animals, so as to give these seemingly bland lifeless remains a feeling in order to rekindle their history.
Apart from the large petroglyph less than 100 yards below, these hut circle are apparently in isolation if we go by the record books. And they’re difficult to make out when the grasses are tall—as they were when I visited recently. They are both roughly the same size—about 11 yards across—and, most likely, each housed a small family. The one closest to the wall is the slightly smaller of the two. It was first reported by Miss Comrie (1972) who initially only noticed one of the two huts—probably due to the long grasses. She told that,
“On an area known as Buchanty Hill at 1000ft is a hut circle with a diameter of 11mand wall width of 2m. Situated in a hollow, sheltered from the north and with an entrance on the downward-side facing south. The walling has no obvious inner or outer facing.”
On my visit to this place, the silence was deafening and the fading daylight painted the hills with a stunning velvet breath all across the veil of Her body. It’s a gorgeous isolated place that you might aswell sit down with after you’ve finished looking at the rock art…
References:
Comrie, J.E.M., “Fowlis Wester Parish: Hut Circle,” in Discovery & Excavation, Scotland, 1972.
From Bettyhill village, take the A836 road east (as if you’re heading towards Thurso) for literally 1½ miles (2.4km) and take the left turn to Farr (signposted). Exactly a mile along, just past the gated house above the road on your right, in the sloping field below it, you’ll notice a seemingly innocuous scatter of stones doing nothing in particular in the grassland. That’s it!
Archaeology & History
There’s not too much to look at here, apart from a very overgrown mass of loose stones seemingly piled up near the bottom of the sloping hillside. It was first noted when James Horsburgh (1870) explored the prehistoric sites of the region, but even then the site was mentioned with some brevity, telling simply:
“On the way from Farr to Borve Castle, there are the foundations of a Pictish tower at Clarkhill, the stones of which are larger than usual, being square blocks.”
Looking down on the ruins
His description regarding its precise whereabouts wasn’t very clear, but it was located some years later by the Royal Commission (1911) who subsequently added the site to their Inventory. They found that the broch was “at the extreme west end of a low rocky ridge on which are situated the buildings of a croft bearing the name of The Dun.” They reported, even then, that only a few large stones of the broch remained visible. `
The site was included in Euan Mackie’s (2007) magnum opus, where he described the only remains left of this “possible broch” to be “the basal course of the outer wall…forming an arc about 9.0m long.”
MacKie, E W., The Roundhouses, Brochs and Wheelhouses of Atlantic Scotland c.700 BC-AD 500 – volume 2, British Archaeological Report: Oxford 2007.
Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Second Report and Inventory of Monuments & Constructions in the County of Sutherland. HMSO: Edinburgh 1911.
Acknowledgements: With thanks to the old crew of Aisha and her little Lara for getting me up here, oh so many years ago now…..
Cup-Marked Stone (lost): OS Grid Reference – NO 262 503
Archaeology & History
In an excursion to the Iron Age Hillfort on Barry Hill in the early 1960s by some members of the Perthshire Society of Natural Science, near the very top on its southwestern side they discovered “a small cup marked stone.” (Longworth 1962) It hasn’t been seen since. And whether it was in the walling of the fort, or was a carved earthfast rock, they neglected to tell. When I visited here several years ago I couldn’t find the damn thing and presume that it’s simply been overgrown by the vegetation. In the event that you manage to rediscover the carving, see if you can catch us a good photo or two and stick ’em on our Facebook group.
References:
Longworth, Ian, “Dundee, Angus,” in Discovery & Excavation, Scotland, 1962.
From Alyth, take the B954 road north to Glen Isla, or from Kirriemiur northwest up the B951. Whichever your route, once you pass the Kirkton of Glenisla about 10 miles up, make sure you DON’T cross the river bridge a mile past here—instead take the tiny right-turn just before the bridge and go up here (past Folda) for just over 2 miles and then park up where the signpost tells Cateran Trail (if you’ve crossed the next river bridge, you’ve gone 150 yards too far). Walk up the track and, after a mile, it levels-out just where it swerves to go back downhill. Once here, walk off the track and up onto the moorland on your right (south) and where the land levels out, zigzag around, keeping your eyes peeled for the circular stone enclosures. There are several of them.
Archaeology & History
On the way back from seeking out a forgotten holy well at Auchenchapel in the hills above Glen Isla last week, I stumbled across a small group of hut circles which, it turns out, weren’t in the record books. Unfortunately I found them near the end of the day, so it was a bit of a rush-job zooming back and forth taking quick photos of what was there, i.e., at least three hut circles, probably Iron Age in origin (although I’ve seen Bronze Age circles just like these) constructed very close to each other, with a possible fourth one buried in deeper heather nearby. The circles have been built on a high exposed ridge linking Glen Isla to Glen Clova a few miles to the east, but when these were built this area would obviously have possessed a good cover of birch, hazel and other trees, protecting the structures from the elements.
Hut circle (1) looking NW
Golan Well hut circle (1)
The first one—hut circle (1) (at NO 19765 65581)—has been built and cut into a slight slope in the hillside, with the floor inside obviously leveled out. Measuring roughly 16 yards across from outer wall to outer wall, the entrance to the building seems to be on the eastern side and the average height of the walling all round is roughly 2 feet. On the whole the structure is in very good condition, with hardly any damage done despite its great age. It was obviously built for a single family, but was no doubt used over and over for many centuries.
Hut circle (2) looking NE
Hut circle (2) looking SW
The second of the circles (at NO 19741 65590) is just 15-20 yards away to the northwest. Slightly smaller than hut circle (1) and also built into slightly sloping ground, its walls are a little more sturdy and slightly wider than its compatriot and were built around at least two earthfast boulders making it structurally much stronger. Measuring roughly 15 yards across from outer wall to outer wall, the entrance to this circle is at the southeast. Once again, this would have been perfect for a single family to live in.
Hut circle (3) looking NW
The small hut circle (3)
The third of the hut circles found this day was the smallest of the group and suggests that it would have housed only one person. The stones making up this small circle are unusually large for such a small structure, which made me think at first that it may have been a cairn—but the more I looked, the more I realized that this wasn’t the case. Somewhat more oval in shape than the other two, unlike its compatriots some parts of the walls seem to have been disturbed and knocked down to the side. The poor little fella measures only 8 yards across, but its walls were still nice and sturdy being roughly a yard wide all round.
Line of ancient walling
What seemed to be a fourth hut circle was covered in deep heather close to the cluster of three, but we need another visit here to work out whether this suspicion is correct or not. Much more certain is the existence, less then a hundred yards northwest of here, of a very distinct line of ancient walling, about a yard wide, suggesting that the hut circles were encircled by a much larger enclosed structure. I paced along this walling for 60 yards, whereafter it disappeared into the heather.
It’s extremely likely that other unrecorded prehistoric remains are still to be found in this area. So get y’ walking boots on and get that nose of yours a-twitching across these ‘ere ancient hills!
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for Prof. Paul Hornby, for getting us up here and having another fine day fine on the hills…
From Alyth, take the B954 road north to Glen Isla, or from Kirriemiur northwest up the B951. Whichever route you take, goes for miles, then past the Kirkton of Glenisla for another mile make sure you DON’T cross the river bridge—instead take the tiny right-turn just before the bridge and go up here (past Folda) for just over 2 miles and park up where the signpost tells Cateran Trail (if you’ve crossed the next river bridge, you’ve gone 150 yards too far). Walk up the track for a mile where it just about levels-out, before swerving back downhill again and, shortly after crossing a burn, turn right and head downhill into the heathlands. About 350 yards down, right beside the track, this overgrown hut circle lives! Y’ can easily walk straight past it if you’re not careful.
Archaeology & History
The hollowed hut circle
In a beautiful setting, this good-sized Iron Age hut circle (possibly earlier), roughly fourteen yards across, sits within a wider archaeological environment of human settlements all round here from medieval and later periods, most of which has almost entirely disappeared beneath the vegetation on these gorgeous moorlands. It’s one of a number of remaining prehistoric circles that still live amidst the later remains and would have housed a good-sized family or two. The walls alone are roughly six-feet thick all round, making it a very solid building indeed! In all likelihood, other hut circles have been torn down for use in the construction of the later medieval buildings nearby. Thankfully, like the very well-preserved cluster up the slope above Golan Well, this one survived.
Going along the B6160 road from Grassington to Kettlewell and taking the little road to Arncliffe on your left just a few hundred yards past Kilnsey Crags, after ¾ of a mile keep your eyes peeled for the small parking spot on the left-side of the road, with the steep rocky stream that leads up to the Sleet Gill Cave. Walk up this steep slope, following the same directions to reach the Sleets Gill Top enclosure. From here you’ll notice a large gap in the rocky crags about 200 yards WSW that you can walk through. On the other side of this gap, along a small footpath about another 200 yards along you’ll reach a large ovoid rock. Just before this, on your right, is a long rocky rise with distinct drystone walling below it. That’s the spot!
Archaeology & History
Walled section, looking S
Encircling a slightly sloping area of ground that stretches out beneath a long line of limestone crags is this notable walled enclosure running almost the full length of the rocky ridge. Measuring 40 yards (36m) in length by 10 yards (9m) across at its greatest width, this elongated rectangular enclosure has all attributes of being Iron Age in origin, much like many others in this area. However, in comparison with the others close by, this is a pretty small construction and—if used for human habitation, as is likely—would have housed only two or three families.
Western end of enclosure
Within the enclosure itself, near its western end, we find an internal line of walling that creates a single room: enough for a single family, or perhaps even where animals were kept. Only an excavation would tell us for sure.
Curious stone ‘cupboard’
One notable interesting feature exists roughly halfway along the enclosure, up against the crag itself: here is small man-made stone “cupboard” of sorts, akin to some modern pantry. You’ll get an idea of it in the photo. At first I wondered if this would have been a sleeping space, but, unless it was where a shaman liked to encase him/herself inside a domestic household cave (highly improbable), it would have served a simple pragmatic function. Make up your own mind.
I liked this place. It’s surrounded by crags on almost all sides with some ancient spirit-infested rocky hills very close by, giving it a beautiful ambience. Immediately below the enclosure is what looks to be a large dried-up pool, which was probably well stocked with fish. A perfect living environment. Check it out!
Go up the B6160 road from Grassington to Kettlewell and just a few hundred yards past the famous Kilnsey Crags, take the little road to Arncliffe on your left. After ¾ of a mile, keep your eyes peeled for the small parking spot on the left-side of the road, with the steep rocky stream that leads up to the Sleet Gill Cave. Walk up to the cave, then keep going up the same steep slope to the wall/fence above. You can get over the wooden fence and keep following the wall until it just about levels out nearly 200 yards up. From here, walk 100 yards to your right where the land rises up and you’re at the edge of the walled enclosure. Look around.
Archaeology & History
Walled section, looking W
On top of a small rise in the land is this large, roughly rectangular walled enclosure measuring about 55 yards across at its longest axis (roughly WNW to ESE) and averaging 24 yards wide. The walling is pretty low down and, in some areas (mainly on its eastern edges) almost disappears beneath the vegetation—but you can still make it out – just! The southernmost edge of the enclosure is built upon a the edge of a natural rocky outcrop (typical of many enclosure and settlement sites in this neck o’ the woods) and when you stand on this section you see a very distinct rectangular enclosure, sloping down from here. This would likely have been where animals were kept as it makes no sense as a human living quarter due it being on a slope. But below this, where the land levels out, another low line of ancient walling reaches towards the high modern walls. This is one of three lines of ancient walling running, roughly parallel to the more modern walls (which themselves may have an Iron Age origin) from the main enclosure.
Aerial view of site
The entire structure is Iron Age in origin, but the site would have been in continual use throughout the Romano-British period and possibly even into early medieval centuries (though only an excavation would confirm that). Its basic architecture is replicated in the many other prehistoric settlements that still exist on the hills all round here (there are dozens of them). You’ll see this clearly when you visit the High Sleets enclosure less than 400 yards southwest from here.
