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MHG14555 - Stone alignment - Ladystone Farm

Summary

A stone alignment at Ladystone Farm.

Type and Period (1)

Protected Status

Full Description

The Inverness Field Club, led by Donald Coghill, surveyed a number of sites in the Aird area between 1987 and 1989. Above Ladystone Farm.
Close to the old disused road a pointed stone, three feet high and with a lean of about 45 degrees, stands at the end of a robbed straight double line of low stones approximately 15 ins, apart. This runs westwards for 100 yards through birch scrub to the boundary ditch bordering the arable field near which intermittent stones, some on the edge, are clearly visible and form a channel between the two rows. <1>

Double stone row running east to west for c.90m through dense wooded area, terminating in west at boundary with modern arable field. At east terminus there is a large standing stone c.1m in height.
Coghill and Hanley 1993. <2>

Extract from report on findings at this site by Laurence Draper, President of Dingwall Field Club is as follows:
"One of the more interesting sites in the Aird is that of an assembly of stones, each protruding about half a metre above the present vegetation level (in March), apparently placed in a line on the north western slopes of Dunain Hill south west of Inverness. They are in an old birchwood amongst very many rotted tree stumps; both the tree stumps and the stones are covered in several centimetres of moss and vegetation so that identification of which are stones and which are wood is not immediately obvious. However, by prodding with a stick it is easy to distinguish between them. Recently, 20 members of the Dingwall Field Club participated in an exercise to identify which, if any, might be part of a man-made assembly of stones. Several hundred of these mounds in the vicinity were investigated; on those which were of stone a piece of new kindling wood was placed vertically in the vegetation on the mound, and on those which were of old tree stump it was laid horizontally. It transpired that there was a strong tendency for the stones to be laid in pairs, centres about 1 metre apart with a separation of about one to two metres between each pair.

On completion of this exercise it became apparent that about 80 of the 90 stones identified lay in complete or incomplete pairs along a fairly good straight line of about 90 metres in length aligned virtually east-west, with the other ten lying randomly, and generally about a metre or so out of line. The width of 'walkway' between each pair of stones is perhaps 30-40 centimetres. At the eastern end there is a large blocking stone, of about 1 metre in height and now leaning at an angle of perhaps 45: placed on the centre line of the 'walkway' The western end terminates at the edge of the wood adjacent to an arable field so it is not known whether or not this was the original extremity of the row. The best assemblies of pairs of stones are near the western end. In the middle, assuming that they were originally laid in pairs there also, many stones appear to have been robbed, possibly used in the construction of the adjacent drove road." <3>

Sources/Archives (3)

Map

Location

Grid reference	Centred NH 6219 4330 (30m by 30m) (2 map features)
Map sheet	NH64SW
Civil Parish	INVERNESS AND BONA
Geographical Area	INVERNESS

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