Description

The monument is a complex of burial, ceremonial, settlement and agricultural remains of the prehistoric period, and settlement and agricultural remains of the early historic and pre-modern periods.

The monument includes 5 burial cairns, ranging from the remains of the Grey cairn, 27m in diameter and 1.7m high, to a ring cairn 6m in diameter and 0.3m high. Most have been disturbed in the 19th century. The burial monuments are complemented by the survival of a stone circle measuring some 7m in diameter, all the stones of which are prone or leaning. There is an outlying stone to the NNW.

The earliest settlement remains (dating to around 1000 BC) are represented by a vast complex of hut circles (some 15 included in the scheduled area) and range from single walled structures 10m in diameter to double-walled examples c. 20m across. There is a group of circles at the N edge of the area and further concentrations in the central part of the scheduled area and at the SW. Associated with the circles are numerous field banks and around 1000 small cairns, probably formed by clearing fields of stone.

In the northern and SE parts of the scheduled area are 5 'Pitcarmick-type' long buildings, dating from the first millennium AD, between 12m and 30m long and up to 8.5 m across. These buildings are associated with small yards.

The latest phases of settlement are represented by four isolated later rectangular buildings and two larger farmsteads abandoned by 1963, one with a limekiln.

The area to be scheduled is irregular in shape, and measures 1260m from its westernmost to its easternmost points, by 1100m from its northernmost to its southernmost points, to include the remains described above and an area around them in which other traces of human activity are likely to survive, as marked in red on the attached map.

The scheduled area skirts, and specifically excludes, the modern coniferous plantations. The present lines and extents of existing tracks across the monument are also specifically excluded from the scheduling, to allow access and maintenance.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The monument is of national importance as a very well preserved fragment of prehistoric agricultural landscape within which survive a considerable number of earlier burial cairns and a stone circle. The monument is also of importance because of the survival of evidence of later periods of intensive human use of the area, which have not caused significant damage to features of earlier periods.

The monument has the potential to enhance considerably not only our understanding of details of human settlement in the past, but also our application of the ways in which the landscape has been utilised and changed by its past inhabitants.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records the monument as NO 15 NW 1.

References:

Maclagan, C. (1875) The hill forts, stone circles and other structural remains of ancient Scotland, 79, Edinburgh.

OSA (1791-9) The statistical account of Scotland, drawn up from the communications of the ministers of the different parishes, in Sinclair, J (Sir), Vol. 15, 516, Edinburgh.

RCAHMS (1990) The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. North-east Perth: an archaeological landscape, 16, No. 9.1, Edinburgh.

Stuart, J. (1868) 'Account of excavations in groups of cairns, stone circles, and hut circles on Balnabroch, parish of Kirkmichael, Perthshire, and at West Persie, in that neighbourhood', Proc Soc Antiq Scot, Vol. 6, 405-8.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland