Tweedsmuir Standing Stones and other Bronze/Iron Age Sites.
There are many bronze/iron age sites in Tweedsmuir parish comprising Standing Stones, Cairns, Barrows, Enclosed Cremation Cemetries, Ring Enclosures, Unenclosed Platform Settlements, Forts, and Cultivation Terraces. These sites have been well recorded in the past but present day "care" is largely the province of the members of the amateur archaeology group of the Biggar Museum Trust led by Tam Ward. It is estimated that over one hundred sites have been damaged or even destroyed by afforestation in the area. However the site of an unrecorded Unenclosed Platform Settlement has been discovered below the high water mark of the Fruid Reservoir (hence can only be accessed during low water periods.) Details of this site can be found on the groups website Biggar Archaeology. An excellent website for information on Standing Stones is Ancient Stones which includes information on the following.
Tweedsmuir Standing Stones.
Shown on older maps as a Druidal Circle are three Standing Stones straddling the road to the Fruid reservoir. The location of the three stones is shown on the Multimap on the Where is Tweedsmuir page of this site - map. The stones in fact predate the Druids and date from about 2000BC. The largest Standing Stone is known as the Giant's Stone. The name seems hardly appropriate as the stone is only about three feet high!
However previous records, in particular the survey, shown above, done in 1958 by The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland indicate that the stone at that date was over five feet high. I had assumed that the difference in height was due to the stone sinking. in 1999 the Local Community Council thought that raising the stone to its original height would be a good "Millenium" project. I sought the views of Historic Scotland who came to view the site and they came to the conclusion that the stone had not sunk and that the problem was that the road and surrounding ground had been raised about two feet. I concurred with their findings and I suspect that the road was raised when it was upgraded from a track to take the traffic for the construction of the Fruid Reservoir in the sixties. Historic Scotland's view is that the stone is safer to be left undisturbed. The Cairn which is part of the historic site has been further erroded and some imagination is now required to visualise how it was. To add to the problems the area between the Cairn and the Standing Stones has a secondary planting of rowan trees filling the area.
It is recorded that at the highest point of the circle a slightly raised area when ploughed showed that a section had been floored with selected stones of similar size all fitted together.
View of Standing Stones
Other pictures in the Picture Gallery