Parkhouse Stone Circle (a.k.a Aikey Brae Stone Circle)

Getting to the Parkhouse Stone Circle is great fun through fields, down old trails, and into a pine woods.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Aikey Brae Stone Circle in my opinion should actually be called the Parkhouse Stone Circle, after the hill upon which is sits, and sometimes it is referred to thus. (NB: Mar 2009 - I've changed my mind, and now after doing some additional research, believe it should be called Aikey Brae).

However, in the time of the Picts, I’m sure it was called something else again, probably with Pit in its name as many places with Pictish origins have today.

Although most certainly the Pictish people lived in the area, the stones may date back to the time of the Druids as is suggested by the following quote, which comes from: 'Dailly - Dewartown', A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (1846), pp. 259-280. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=43431.

“On the north side of the hill of Parkhouse, also, there were until lately the remains of a small village, supposed to have been occupied by the Druids, but usually called the Picts' houses by the neighbouring peasantry.

The most interesting Druidical temple is that on the top of Parkhouse Hill, the chief stone of which, called the Altar Stone, is fourteen and a half feet long, and five and a half broad; the stones stand about fourteen feet asunder, and inclose [sic] a circle.”

The problem is that no one knows the proper origins of this stone circle, nor any others, and no stories seem to have been passed down, not surprisingly after all those thousands of years.

I am using the site of this stone circle in my new novel, partly because it’s just a stone’s throw away (pardon the pun) from where my great-grandmother was born and partly because I’ve grown fond of it.

From the circle position on the top of the hill, I can actually see the place where she grew up until they emigrated to Canada in 1884. (I tried to centre it between two bushes in the photo.) It’s a place called Scroghill, which is the name of a farm, as well as an actual hill. I like to imagine that she went up there to play, though I have no evidence of this and she has been gone for over thirty years, so I can’t ask her. (The farm buildings are visible between the gorse bushes in the photo below).

I have been able to see where she was born and lived until the age of 11 when they left for Canada. On my first tip to see the home, I was mistakenly led to believe that she was born in one section of the three part stone building, of which one section was a barn. However, since travelling with my friend and tour guide Oliver, I’ve found that this is unlikely and that she more probably lived in the two story farm house, not as primitively as I’d first been told. Regardless, it’s been interesting to see the places of her roots. (NB: March 2009 - more research yet, and there is evidence my grandmother's family actually lived in a small croft on the farm land somewhere....definitely not in either of the houses in the main farm yard.)

Much of what I’m researching now is playing havoc with what I’d already written in my novel, so that I’m re-writing a great deal. This is fine, though, I’m almost convinced to place the setting in a fictitious place in the same area so as not to offend anyone. Perhaps it’s time to create my own version of St. Mary’s Mead…..