Urban standing stones

At the time of writing, according to the National Record of the Historic Environment, there are 1,251 single standing stones recorded in Scotland. Almost all are prehistoric in origin, probably dating back to the 3rd or 4th millennium BCE, but some are more recent, ranging from Pictish carved stones, to medieval boundary markers, to miscellaneous post-medieval monoliths. Not all of these stones are still standing; some are little more than antiquarian footnotes from Statistical Accounts, victims of overly zealous farmers in past centuries. But the vast majority are still extant, even if not all in their original location or configuration. This is a substantial megalithic heritage measured in the thousands of tonnes.

You have probably walked or driven past some of these ancient relics, usually standing alone in a field or sitting proud on a hillside. They appear to us as inscrutable, defying time and endless weathering: some of these megaliths will have been illuminated by over a million sunrises. They carefully guard their secrets in the form of wonderful simplicity: they are nothing more than a stone