Dunnydeer Hill and Recumbent Stone Circle (Aberdeenshire)

Driving south from Huntly (Aberdeenshire, Scotland) with the late afternoon beating down, my attention is repeatedly grabbed by a picturesque ruin standing on a little hill. It pops up first to the left then to the right; as the road winds, the ruin disappears and reappears. We of course have to stop when we turn a corner and an empty parking place appears in front of us. To my joy, there is a footpath sign which announces that it is 1km to the ruin and 0.5km to the standing stones - oh what sorcery is this? We will get to see some megaliths as well! These ancient stones pop up when they want to be seen.

It's a lovely walk up from the road to the ruin. We scale one hill and then see there's a further climb up to a second summit, where the ruin stands. As we get closer, we see it is the remains of a hillfort, very romantic. It is no doubt built upon the site of more ancient things and we can see for miles in all directions. Later on when we are back home and perusing Julian Cope's The Modern Antiquarian it turns out he places Dunnydeer hill right in the middle of a sacred landscape and we could actually have seen several stone circles from up on the hill, had we known to look. The tower has been vitrified - this refers to a process not really understood by archaeologists in which the stones appear to have been burnt, not as a destructive urge but rather to make them stronger.

Having drunk my fill of the view, I am now eager to find the stones which must have drawn us here. We descend from the ruin back to the lower summit, where we stumble across the stones cheekily hiding under trees. What can I say, other than this recumbent stone circle is not in a good condition at all.

A recumbent stone circle, or RSC for short, is a sort of monument unique to Aberdeenshire, with related types to be found in Ireland (axial stone circles) and Inverness-shire (Clava cairns). This particular sort of circle is characterised by being located on sloping hill-sides and being aligned with the moon. They tend to have orthostats (standing stones) arranged in a circle, with the largest stone being lain on its side (therefore "recumbent") with two stones flanking it (the flankers). A comprehensive almanac of these sites has recently been published by Adam Welfare and is entitled The Recumbent Stone Circles of North-East Scotland.

In the particular case of the Dunnydeer stone circle, sadly it is recorded as destroyed. All that's left today are the recumbent and its two flankers, which have been knocked over and moved around in the past. It's hard to get a feel for the original siting, but don't worry it is an amazing location at least. Opinions differ on how the circle was originally set up, for me it seemed clear the circle was founded on the relatively flat piece of land just up from where the stones are now but the presence of trees (which may or not have been there at the time of construction) makes it all a guessing game really.

Despite the disquiet caused by seeing a destroyed stone circle, the remaining stones still rock and they do stand in a lovely spot.

I was very pleased to find them!

This discovery marked the beginning of a few days of intensive recumbent stone circle explorations ...

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This visit occurred in October 2020.

This is article 1 in part of an ongoing series of posts about visits to megalithic sites, called the Rolling Stones.