Building record MAB21930 - BISHOP'S CROSS, TYREBAGGER HILL

The 'Bishop's Cross' and the 'Great Stone', marking the boundary of the lands belonging to the Bishop of Aberdeen in the Newhills parish, including the Crown land of Bishopston and the southern part of Tyrebagger Hill.

The 'Bishop's Cross' and the 'Great Stone', marking the boundary of the lands belonging to the Bishop of Aberdeen in the Newhills parish, including the Crown land of Bishopston and the southern part of Tyrebagger Hill. These lands were specifically excluded from a charter of 1316, in which the boundary marks of the Bishop's Lands included 'the Bishop's Cross', a large rock (the 'Great Stone') circa 36m to the north, a recumbent stone (NJ81SW0017) at another point and certain boundary walls. In the charter the cross is described as lying in 'via regia', the king's highway, the ancient north road between Aberdeen and Inverness. Cruickshank described these sites in 1926, with the flat cross formed by banks of stone and turf 14.6 m and 19.5 m long respectively, about 0.6 m high and 1 m broad intersecting at their mid points. At that time the Great Stone had suffered considerably from surface quarrying. He described the ancient road, via regia, surviving in this section as an old track that had continued in use to access the woods and the crofts further to the north and northwest. It was less than 1.8 m (6 feet) wide, with a solid, well preserved base, almost level the whole way, being formed as a shelf in the brow of the hillside. The Bishop's Cross and the Great Stone lay just to the north side of the road. The OS site visit in 1961 could not locate either the Great Stone or the cross. At that time the dykes forming the northeast boundary of the Bishop's Lands were well preserved on the north side, but in a ruinous condition elsewhere. The RCAHMS visited the site in September 2001 and recorded the cross shaped arrangement of drystone walls as circa 1 m in thickness by 0.5 m in height, with one wall measuring circa 23 m in length from northwest to southeast, the other 14.5 m from northeast to southwest, situated on a stony, southwest facing slope, lying within a small clearing in mature conifer woodland. The RCAHMS concluded that the features previously identified as the medieval boundary markers and the Bishop's Cross had potentially been misidentified, suggesting instead that the cross may have been a sheep shelter, with the actual cross probably on the east side of the hill, potentially remembered in the place name, Corsehill. The boundary marker of the Great Stone could not be identified.

CRUICKSHANK, J, 1926, NEWHILLS CROSS, ABERDEENSHIRE. IN: PSAS 60 (1925-6) 269-73, 269-273 (Bibliographic reference). SAB249.

CRUICKSHANK, J, 1934, NEWHILLS: THE ANNALS OF THE PARISH, 44 (Bibliographic reference). SAB250.

Apr 23 2021 , PUB-GR-21-04-006, PUB-GR-21-04-006 (Ground Photograph). SAB35117.

Record last edited

Feb 15 2023 1:58PM