Qualla: Cullerlie Stone Circle

Cullerlie Stone Circle: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J.E. Walkowitz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most stone circles guard their secrets in empty centres. Cullerlie does the opposite. Eight irregular red granite stones, none taller than your shoulder, form a small ring on a low gravel ridge in Aberdeenshire - and inside them, instead of empty ceremonial ground, sit eight little burial cairns ringed with kerbstones of their own. It is the only known circle of its kind. The whole arrangement measures just over ten metres across, modest by the standards of British prehistory. But its strangeness has kept archaeologists arguing for nearly two centuries about who built it, why, and what relationship the builders intended between the standing stones outside and the dead they laid inside.

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Image: J.E. Walkowitz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cullerlie Stone Circle: Standing Stones of Echt

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill McKelvie (User:Wmck), CC BY 2.5. Cullerlie sits about a mile south of the village of Echt, on a low gravel ridge that once formed the southern edge of Leuchar Moss. In the second millennium BC, when the circle was built, the surrounding ground was sodden bog. Hauling these stones to the site was not casual work....

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Image: Bill McKelvie (User:Wmck) | CC BY 2.5

Cullerlie Stone Circle: Eight Cairns Within

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PaulT (Gunther Tschuch), CC BY-SA 4.0. What makes Cullerlie genuinely unique is what its builders placed inside the ring. Eight small cairns - mounds of stones - sit within the circle, each enclosed by its own kerb of upright ringstones. The central cairn has a double ring of kerbstones; the other seven have single ri...

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Image: PaulT (Gunther Tschuch) | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cullerlie Stone Circle: A 1934 Excavation

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lizzie, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stone circles attract speculation the way ponds attract midges. By the nineteenth century, Cullerlie was being described as the home of seven satellite circles surrounding the main ring, a kind of cosmological diagram in stone. When the site was carefully excavated in 1934, no tr...

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Image: Lizzie | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cullerlie Stone Circle: The Bronze Age Landscape

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oliver Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. When Cullerlie was raised, Aberdeenshire was not yet the Aberdeenshire of green farmland and grey granite. The boggy ground around the site supported scattered woodland and reed beds; the long ridges of higher land carried the dwellings. The people who built recumbent stone circl...

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Image: Oliver Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Cullerlie Stone Circle: What Endures

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Logan, Public domain. Cullerlie is now in the care of Historic Environment Scotland, free to enter, and rarely crowded. The surrounding land is farmland again. Cattle graze a few fields away. The site has the quiet, slightly forlorn dignity of every small monument that has outlived its purpose by seve...

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Image: James Logan | Public domain