A hidden treasure from pre-history.
This small Four Poster stone circle, so called because of the prominent upright stones that feature in each corner of a rectangle, is beautifully set on the north-eastern shoulder of a low hill.
One of the stones has fallen, the other three are still standing and measure between three and five feet tall. Other smaller stones would have completed such a monument circuit but these do not usually survive. The recumbent stone and the tall one opposite are granite from Ben Vuirich. One of the others is schist and the fourth is garnet-bearing schist.
In a nearby wood are a collection of larger stones that were thought to be the remains of another circle but are now considered to be simply field clearance.
Stone circles began to appear in the late Neolithic (c 3,000 – c 2,500 BC) and continue to be constructed and re-modelled well into the Bronze Age. Whatever their form, stone circles appear to have had a ceremonial function and many are aligned to relate to events in the yearly movement of the sun and the moon across the horizon.
