Qualla: Easter Aquhorthies Stone Circle

Easter Aquhorthies Stone Circle: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill McKelvie, CC BY 2.5. There are perhaps a hundred recumbent stone circles in north-east Scotland, and they are the region's signature contribution to British prehistory. None of them is as completely intact as Easter Aquhorthies. Every stone is original. Every stone is still standing. None has been re-erected, restored, or replaced. Climb the gentle hillside about a mile west of Inverurie, push open the small wooden gate, and you stand inside a four-thousand-year-old monument that has weathered every century since without losing its bones. The flat-topped recumbent stone, 3.8 metres long, still lines up with the southern moonset over the distant Hill of Fare, exactly as its builders intended.

Image: Bill McKelvie | CC BY 2.5

Easter Aquhorthies Stone Circle: What a Recumbent Stone Circle Is

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felicilijonas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The recumbent stone circle is a regional invention - a peculiar variant of the British stone circle tradition that flourished only in Aberdeenshire and the lands immediately west, sometime in the third millennium BC. The defining feature is a single massive horizontal stone, the ...

Image: Felicilijonas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Easter Aquhorthies Stone Circle: Red, Grey, and the Use of Colour

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit pamela, CC BY-SA 2.0. The ring of nine standing stones has a secret that you only see when the light is right. Eight are grey granite. One is red jasper. The recumbent itself is red granite flecked with crystals and lines of quartz. And the builders placed the reddish stones deliberately on the south-...

Image: pamela | CC BY-SA 2.0

Easter Aquhorthies Stone Circle: Aligned to the Moon

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elizabeth Angus, CC BY-SA 2.0. The recumbent stone at Easter Aquhorthies is aligned so that its level top points toward the southern moonset over the Hill of Fare. Recumbent circles across the region show similar lunar alignments, varied to match local horizons - the moon, not the sun, was the celestial body t...

Image: Elizabeth Angus | CC BY-SA 2.0

Easter Aquhorthies Stone Circle: Two Centuries of Visitors

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Devinberg, CC BY 4.0. The site survived the early modern centuries by being unremarkable enough to leave alone. Surrounding farmland was cultivated, but the circle itself was protected from grazing cattle by a stone dyke called a roundel, built between 1847 and 1866-67. The Victorians arrived next. In...

Image: Devinberg | CC BY 4.0

Easter Aquhorthies Stone Circle: Standing Inside

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Wood, CC BY-SA 2.0. What strikes you on the ground is how small the circle is - only 18.4 by 18.1 metres across the slightly squashed ring - and how big the stones feel inside it. The recumbent is the size of a kitchen counter laid flat at chest height; the flankers loom on either side. Acoustic sur...

Image: Andrew Wood | CC BY-SA 2.0