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.
Stone Circle (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NO 0015 2411
Also Known as:
Skelfie
Archaeology & History
Sometime between the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a Perthshire architect by the name of Thomas Ross was informed by a farm-worker called John Lawson who lived at Meckphen, that a stone circle had existed at Bachilton, but which had been destroyed when he was young. The information was gained by the great Fred Coles (1910) during his extensive survey work in and around Perthshire, but all trace of the site had gone when he came to write about it. He told us simply:
“Many years ago, several Stones of a Circle stood here, upon what appeared to be an artificial, and quite distinct mound which is still visible. The Stones were, however, undermined and buried, so as to be out of the reach of the plough, close to their respective sites.”
All subsequent searches for the site have proved fruitless and the circle’s long gone.
Make a day out for this one! You could, of course, go barely half-a-mile straight up the hill (southwest) from Ossian’s Stone in the Sma’ Glen below – but it’s steep as fuck and I know that most of you wouldn’t do it. So, park-up and take the gradual 3 mile walk into the mountains. Coming via Crieff, along the A85 road east, turn left up the A822 Dunkeld road at Gilmerton. 2½ miles on, you reach the Foulford golf course on the right-hand side of the road, whilst directly across the road a dirt-track leads you into the fields, past the large Foulford cup-and-ring stone. Keep along this track, bearing right just before Connochan Lodge and follow this dirt-track uphill on and on for another 2 miles where you’ll eventually see the cairn-peak in the distance. Another shallow track leads uphill after about 2 miles: we walked up to where the ground levels out, walked across the dodgy swamp-land and up again to the tomb. It’s well worth it!
Archaeology & History
Visible for many miles round here from the surrounding hills, this somewhat mutilated giant cairn, highlighted on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1867, hasn’t fared well in archaeology tomes. Apart from a passing note in Margaret Stewart’s (1966) summary article on prehistoric remains in central Perthshire—where she erroneously told it to be 400 feet lower down that it actually is—almost nothing has been said of this place. Most odd.
Cairn spoil, looking SE
New cairn atop of the old
Despite it being ransacked over the centuries, it was obviously of some considerable size in its early days. Today, surmounting it, is a very large walker’s cairn which, no doubt, has accrued some of its own foundations from the prehistoric tomb on which it sits. To the side of this recent cairn, another one is growing, thanks to stones brought from near and not-too-far. But the original creation can still be seen in outline and mass all around. Indeed, as you walk all round the modern cairn, you’re walking over much of the early collapsed stonework sleeping gently beneath the moorland vegetation, and once you walk away and below the cairn mass itself, looking back up at it you’ll notice the very ancient raised plinth of stone on which our modern one now lives.
Low walling on NW side
Its amorphous shape is somewhat amoeboid, measuring more than 22 yards across east-west, by 15 yards north-south, with a curious arc of low walling, very old indeed, on its northwestern side. Whether this walling outlines the original edge of the tomb, only an excavation will tell. The most notable remaining mass of ancient cairn material reaches out on its south-east to eastern edges, where some of it is beginning to fall away down the edge of the mountain slope.
Folklore
Local tradition assigns this cairn to be where the bones of the great hero-figure Ossian was removed to, when they were disturbed by the unruly mob of General Wade and his cohorts in the middle of the 18th century. Notes of the event were written at the time by one of Wade’s mob, a Captain Edward Burt, who told,
“the Highlanders, they assembled from distant parts, and having formed themselves into a body, they carefully gathered up the relics, and marched with them, in solemn procession, to a new place of burial, and there discharged their fire-arms over the grave, as supposing the deceased had been a military officer.”
This was essential, said Burt, as
Site shown on 1867 map
New cairn on old, looking W
“they (the Highlanders) firmly believe that if a dead body should be known to lie above ground, or be disinterred by malice, or the accidents of torrents of water, &c. and care was not immediately taken to perform to it the proper rites, then there would arise such storms and tempests as would destroy their corn, blow away their huts, and all sorts of other mis-fortunes would follow till that duty was performed. You may here recollect what I told you so long ago, of the great regard the Highlanders have for the remains of their dead…”
Oral tradition tells us that this cairn, high above Ossian’s Stone, is where the rites occurred. It makes sense too.
References:
Finlayson, Andrew, The Stones of Strathearn, One Tree Island: Comrie 2010.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
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.
You need to hit the village of Fowlis Wester, which is easiest to approach from both east and west along the A85, between Crieff and Perth: nearly 3 miles east of Gilmerton and about 6½ mile west of Methven. Keep your eyes peeled and take the road up (north) where the large rounded tree-covered tumulus stands and up to the village. Go through the village and uphill for literally ½ a mile (veering sharp left at a junction) where a gate on your right leads into the fields. (a large parking spot is 300 yards further uphill) Walk ¼-mile east and through the other side of the small woodland, over the fence, you’ll see the mound of a typical tumulus. That’s it!
Archaeology & History
If you’re going to visit the megalithic remains of Fowlis Wester ¾-miles to the west, the antiquarians amongst you might as well give this old burial mound your attention too. It’s not grandiose by any means, but its position in the landscape is quite superb. It’s built upon a long geological promontory with extensive views that reach from south-east to south to south-west for many miles into the distance with the Ochils framing the majority of the southern horizon, but also with the notable pap of the West Lomond hill 20 miles to the south-east mimicking the shape of the tomb itself. It was obviously built here with the extended landscape having some ancestral importance. Visit it and see for yourself!
Despite being a notable mound, this tumulus-cum-cairn only seems to have been written about for the first time as recently as 1998, when archaeologist Ian Armit visited the site. Roughly circular in form, it’s about 12 yards across and more than six feet in height. A small pile of stones crowns the very top, placed here in much more recent times. At ground level on its northern side, an arc of low lying stones define the edge of the tomb. The stones probably continue all the way round the entire structure, but it’s overgrown by centuries of soil and vegetation and we lose sight of it as we walk round. When Mr Armit (1998) wrote about the site, he and colleague wrote:
Seat Knowe, looking NW
Seat Knowe, looking north
“A grassed-over stony cairn lies on the highest point of Seat Knowe, a ridge commanding extensive views to the south. The cairn has a diameter of c.10m and is up to 2m high. A modern cairn occupies it summit. The low turf foundations of a rectilinear structure, some 6 x 8m, occupy its south flank, and thee are extensive cultivation and field system remains in the vicinity.”
Check it out! You won’t be disappointed.
Folklore
An interesting piece of relatively recent folklore about Seat Knowe, described in the Perthshire Name Book around 1862, told that,
“One of the Earls of Strathearn, desirous of having a church in the vicinity of his Castle, stood on an eminence, on which he had a summer seat, and resolved to erect it where the sun first shone, which was on the spot where it now stands.”
References:
Armit, Ian & Hall, M., “Seat Knowe (Fowlis Wester parish): Cairn,” in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, 1998.
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.
Cup-Marked Stone (lost): OS Grid reference – NN 918 524
Archaeology & History
On the hillside a short distance (probably) south of old Balnabeggan farmhouse, up against some walling at the edge of some natural birch wood, could once be seen—some fifty or sixty years ago—a large, ornately inscribed, quartz-enriched cup-marked stone. And, although seemingly lost, it shouldn’t be too hard to uncover with a little bit of bimbling and dedication. It was described in some considerable detail in John Dixon’s (1922) survey of the Strathtay petroglyphs as being,
Balnabeggan stone, c.1920
1921 sketch of the stone
“roughly hexagonal in shape, but one side is partly hidden by an old dry-stone wall built above it. The greatest width is 7 feet, whilst a diameter at right angles measures 6 feet. The thickness or depth of the stone is at least 2 feet, but it may be more underneath, as the stone stands in a wet place in which it may have settled down.
“On the upper surface of the stone are fifty-nine cups of various sizes, the largest measuring 2½ inches in diameter, and from 1 inch to ½ inch, or less, in depth. A special feature is that four equidistant cups (three in a row and the fourth at a right angle to the centre of the row) are connected by grooves slightly less broad and deep than the cups. Three pairs of cups are also similarly connected. The cups connected as described are discernible, but the group of four cups on the low left side of the stone does not appear in the photograph to have its fourth cup (the lowest) connected, as it really is, with the central cup of the group.”
Mr Dixon’s additional clue as to its whereabouts is that it’s “about 500 feet above sea level.” So what, pray, has become of it…?
References:
Dixon, John H., “Cup-Marked Stones in Strathtay, Perthshire,” in Proceedings Society Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 56, 1922.
Kennedy, James, Folklore and Reminiscences of Strathtay and Grandtully, Munro Press: Perth 1927.
