Cullerlie Stone Circle

Cullerlie Stone Circle lies on a low gravel ridge in the bottom of a valley near Garlogie, west of Aberdeen, ringed on all sides by rising ground. About 4,000 years ago its builders levelled the ground, set up a circle of eight standing stones between 1.1 and 1.8 metres high, and burned the whole interior with piles of willow twigs before building eight small ring cairns inside, each holding a cremation. Historic Scotland notes their fascination with numbers: eight stones, eight cairns, eleven kerb stones round most of the cairns and twenty-two round the largest, central one, which covered a pit of charcoal and burnt human bone. It may be a later development of Aberdeenshire's recumbent stone circles and has few parallels, perhaps because farming removed others. Reviewers find it small, neat and well kept, a quick stop from the little car park beside it, entered by a slope and a few steps through the wall.