Croft Moraig Carving, Kenmore, Perthshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NN 7975 4726

Getting Here

The long cup-marked rock

Follow the same directions for the Croft Moraig stone Circle.  Then check out the elongated stone lying in the grass on the southwestern edge of the circle.  It’s not that hard to find!

Archaeology & History

This faded cup-and-ring stone is one of a number that have been found incorporated in megalithic rings.  Suggested by some to have once stood upright, the carving found here is in the outer embankment of the Croft Moraig stone circle.  The earliest account I’ve found of this carving is from Alex Hutcheson’s (1889) essay in which he wrote:

“At the south-west side and in the line of the outer circle lies the cupmarked stone. It is a recumbent stone, and like the others in that circle lies with its larger axis in the direction of the encircling line. It measures 6 feet 6 inches long by 2 feet broad, and bears on its surface 23 cups. Two of these are connected by straight channels. The largest cup is 2 inches in ‘diameter and f inch deep. Two of the cups are encircled, each with a concentric ring. None of the other stones exhibit any cups or other artificial markings.”

Cup-marks pointed out

Fred Coles 1910 drawing

Though other cup-marks have been found on another stone in the circle complex.  Consistent with the location of cup-and-ring stones elsewhere in the country, Hutcheson found the carved rock to be just in front of “a longish low mound of small stones, like an elongated cairn, which might yield something if it were to be searched.”  Very little of this cairn remains today.

When Fred Coles came to explore Croft Moraig about 20 years later, he could only discern 19 cups on the stone, most of them the same size, “only two of which differ much in diameter and depth from the rest.” The cup-and-ring that Hutcheson described and the other missing cups had been overgrown by the grasses, Cole said.  When Sonia Yellowlees described the carving in 2004, she said that 21 cups were visible, “one of which is surrounded by a single ring.”

References:

Coles, Fred, “Report on Stone Circles Surveyed in Perthshire,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 44, 1910.
Hadingham Evan, Ancient Carvings in Britain: A Mystery, Garnstone: London 1974.
Hutcheson, Alexander, “Notes on the Stone Circle near Kenmore,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 23, 1889.
Yellowlees, Walter, Cupmarked Stones in Strathtay, Scotland Magazine: Edinburgh 2004.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Advertisement