EAB15941 - Excavation - ESLIE THE SMALLER

The centre of the cairn has been dug out, probably in 1873 by Robert Angus Smith, though he believed that it had already been disturbed and he found no evidence of an inner court (1880, 303-4). The circle had been reduced to its present complement by 1864, when the OS surveyors described it in the Name Book as ‘a druidical circle consisting of five upright stones’ (Kincardineshire, No. 3, p 148), but a little while later Smith wrote that it comprised ‘six standing and a lying one almost exactly at the South; one standing stone being at each end of the lying one as in the others’ (1880, 303-4). This has caused no end of confusion ever since, not only alluding to the presence of an additional upright, but also identifying the prone orthostat on the south as a recumbent; the sixth upright, he seems to suggest, was a flanker at the east end of this fallen slab.