Loanhead of Daviot Stone Circle

A ring of eight standing stones closes around a low kerbed cairn, its southern arc broken by a single recumbent slab laid flat between two tall flankers. The recumbent went up first — set on its side before the rest of the ring rose around it, the anchor the whole arrangement was built to hold. A crack along a natural weakness has since split it lengthways, so what stands today reads as two parallel slabs rather than the single stone it once was.

Loanhead of Daviot is a recumbent stone circle near Daviot, Aberdeenshire, raised in granite in the early Bronze Age.

What we know

Construction is dated broadly to the early Bronze Age, with the recumbent set in place before the rest of the ring. The earliest finds on site are Neolithic pottery sherds, though most of the recovered pottery is later, dating to the late Bronze Age. The circle spans about 21 metres across, its eight orthostats and recumbent setting surrounding a kerbed ring cairn some 16 metres in diameter. Thirty-eight kerb stones trace the cairn’s southern perimeter, growing larger as they near the recumbent.

Frederick Coles made the first detailed record of the site in 1901, finding the east flanker and four orthostats fallen. James Ritchie recorded the recumbent’s cupmarks in 1918 and argued the split stone had once been whole. The major excavation came in 1934–35 under Howard Kilbride-Jones, who stripped 0.3–0.6 metres of soil to reveal the kerb stones, cremated bone, and over 100 sherds of probable late Bronze Age pottery, along with a central pit once thought to be an open court. At the eastern edge he uncovered a cist (a stone-lined burial box) holding an incense cup and cremated bone — the first sign of an entirely unexpected cremation cemetery, some 10 metres across, that the following season’s dig confirmed lay just east-south-east of the circle. Successive funerary pyres there left the remains of at least 31 people, spread among twelve urns and thirteen pits and dated broadly to 2000–1000 BCE. The cremation deposits themselves can no longer be located, so no carbon dating has been possible.

The circle was scheduled as an ancient monument (SM90202) in 1925 and taken into state guardianship in 1933. Its present form owes much to restoration after the 1934–35 dig and to the 1989 removal of stones that had covered the central pit. Loanhead belongs to the recumbent stone circle tradition particular to lowland Aberdeenshire — a ring of orthostats with a large stone laid on its side between two flankers, usually enclosing a low ring cairn. Kinship with the Clava cairns of Inverness-shire has been proposed, and the closest parallels for the form beyond Scotland are the axial stone circles of south-west Ireland. Tomnaverie, another Aberdeenshire circle, shares the same doubled line of kerb stones behind its recumbent.

What is said

No local folklore or tradition is recorded in the sources used for this page.

What to see now

The circle is one of very few recumbent stone circles to keep every stone in place — the recumbent, both flankers, and all eight orthostats still stand. The recumbent itself, at the south-south-west, was originally about 3.4 metres long before the split; the two halves that remain still read as a single unit from a few paces back. The western flanker stands about 2.26 metres tall, its top replaced during the 1934–35 dig; the eastern flanker, about 1.73 metres, carries a single cupmark on its inner face. Twelve shallow cupmarks mark the orthostat beside the eastern flanker, with two more on the stone next to it. Inside the ring, the kerbed cairn is still legible as a low, stone-edged rise, and the enclosed cremation cemetery lies immediately east-south-east of the circle, though nothing above ground now marks it.

How to visit

Loanhead of Daviot is a Historic Environment Scotland property with free entry and no admission charge. A small car park sits beside the circle, about a three-minute walk — some 200 metres — along a short, level path with an on-site interpretation board. The site lies near Daviot, about five miles north-west of Inverurie off the A920, at grid reference NJ 747 288. National Cycle Network routes and Traveline Scotland cover onward public transport options for those approaching without a car.