Auchencar Standing Stone

Erected between 3800 and 2500 BC on the west coast of the Isle of Arran. Possibly a quarry marker for the Machrie Moor stone circles. Part of one of Scotland's densest prehistoric ritual landscapes.

Between five and six thousand years ago, on a slope overlooking the western coast of Arran, people chose a piece of red sandstone and shaped it. They worked it into a form unlike the typical standing stones of the island, creating instead a tall, thin blade that rose to a sharp point. They raised this blade in a field above Machrie Bay, where it could be seen from the sea and from the mountains, and where it would stand as a marker in a landscape already rich with sacred meaning. Five kilometres to the south, across the moorland, they were building stone circles from the same red sandstone. Aubrey Burl, who spent a lifetime studying these circles, came to believe that the stone at Auchencar came from the same geological source, and that this field may have been the quarry from which the circles of Machrie Moor were born. Whether the standing stone marked the quarry, guarded it, or served some entirely different purpose in the ceremonial life of western Arran, no one can now say with certainty. What is certain is that the stone has outlasted everything else. The companion stone fell and broke. Whatever setting the two formed has been lost. The people who raised them left no written record. But the blade of red sandstone still stands, thinner than a hand, taller than a house, five thousand years into its vigil over Machrie Bay.