Tag: megalithic sites

Caddam, Clova, Angus

megalithix

Standing Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NO 33546 72144

Getting Here

Caddam stone, looking E

The only real way to get here is via Kirriemuir.  Head north to the hamlet of Cortachy and past it, as you enter Glen Clova, where the road splits make sure you bear to the left-hand (western) side.  Nearly 5½ miles along, keep your eyes peeled on your right where you can’t really miss it.  The stone’s less than 100 yards into the field.  …It may perhaps be a bit easier if you take the eastern road of the glen all the way to Clova village.  Turn right from there, over the small river bridge and as it curves to go back down the glen, a half-mile along you pass Caddam house.  Keep going for another 500 yards and you’ll notice it in the field.

Archaeology & History

Stone and its hut circle

Not to be confused with the ruined stone circle of the same name 10 miles to the south, this small standing stone—only some three feet in height—is at the eastern edge of a small overgrown hut circle measuring some 3 yards by 4 yards across.  You can just make out the overgrown low walling in the second photo (right).  The stone probably had some architectural relationship with the hut circle, but without an excavation we can’t know for certain what that relationship might have been.  A settlement of much larger hut circles can be found on the other side of the river, near Rottal, two miles southeast of here.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Meikle Whitefield, Cargill, Perthshire

megalithix

Stone Circle (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NO 173 342 (approximation)

Archaeology & History

In an archaeological report by Alexander Hutcheson for the Scottish Society of Antiquaries in 1884, he described and illustrated an impressive cup-and-ring stone that was formerly built into the walls of a demolished house ¾-mile from its original position near Meikle Whitefield farm.  Upon destruction of that house, the farmer of West Whitefield—a half-mile from its original position—then moved the stone it into his front garden.  According to tradition, said Hutcheson, this stone

“was originally removed from a circle of stones, which had stood about half-a-mile eastward, but which have now been buried or broken up.”

Despite the local tradition, Hutcheson was some what sceptical of it, thinking that it

“seems very unlikely that such a weighty stone should have been transported for half a mile merely to serve as a foundation stone for a cottage, when the ground around was capable of supplying as many stones as would be required.”

You can see his point; but there are known circumstances where individual stones from megalithic rings have been preserved.  Hence, like John Barnatt (1989) in his magnum opus who preserved the folk memory of such sites, we include it here.  The tradition may well be valid.  Added to this is the fact that in just a few square miles hereby we once had a large cluster of stone circles, a few of which still remain.

Refeences:

  1. Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of Britain (2 volumes), BAR: Oxford 1989.
  2. Hutcheson, Alexander, “Notice of a Cup and Ring-marked Stone, and of Incised Stones Recently Discovered at Cargill, and of an Incised Boulder at Fowlis Wester,” in Proceedings Society Antiquaries Scotland, vol. 18, 1884.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian