Easter Aquhorthies

Easter Aquhorthies stone circle stands on a gentle slope about one and a half kilometres west of Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. The ring contains nine stones, eight of grey granite and one of red jasper, arranged with two tall flankers beside a low recumbent slab. The builders chose stones for colour, placing the red ones on the south-south-west side and the grey ones opposite. A possible cist once covered by a capstone was found at the centre, leaving only a small mound today. The circle measures roughly eighteen metres across but is slightly squashed along a west-north-west to east-south-east axis.

The circle’s flankers reach about two and a half metres high while the recumbent slab is nearly four metres long and one and a half metres high. Its flat top aligns with the southern moonset towards the Hill of Fare, showing how the builders used the landscape. Two other large stones support the recumbent at right angles, projecting into the circle. The name Aquhorthies comes from a Gaelic phrase meaning ‘field of prayer’, suggesting a long history of sacred use.

The site sits inside a small fenced enclosure with a stone dyke built between 1847 and 1867. Late 19th-century landscaping surrounds the circle, and in 1884 the archaeologist Augustus Pitt Rivers took notice. In 1925 it became an ancient monument, and in 1963 the State took it into guardianship. Cleaning in 1985 revealed subtle colouring in the stones and showed the circle has unusual acoustic properties.