EAB20690 - Field Visit and Measured Survey - BRAEHEAD

Only the recumbent remains of this stone circle. It stands at the SW edge of a large stone-walled field, occupying a position on the crest of the ridge midway between the farms of New Leslie and Braehead. The recumbent, which faces SSW, is an irregular block measuring some 3.3m in length by up to 1.8m in height, and its summit rises gently towards the WNW. A support stone at its ESE end was partly buried at the time the drawn survey was carried out in 1999, but a more recent visit in 2007 found its upper portion fully exposed, though nothing can be seen of the cupmarks James Gurnell (two; 1884) and James Ritchie identified on its top (four; 1918, 98–9). A large quartz boulder lies amongst the field-gathered stones behind the recumbent, where a faint swelling in the surface of the ground (see section) suggests the presence of an internal cairn. RCAHMS surveyed the remains of Braehead recumbent stone circle on 22 June 1999 with plane table and alidade producing a plan and section of the circle and an elevation of the recumbent stone at a scale of 1:100. The drawing was checked on site on 29 March 2000. The plan, section and elevation were redrawn in ink and used as the basis for an illustration produced in vector graphics software and published at a scale of 1:250.