The Craw Stane, Rhynie: A Pictish Stone at the Gate of a Royal Stronghold

Why it matters

For a long time the Craw Stane was just another Pictish symbol stone, standing alone on a grassy slope outside the village of Rhynie, under the hill fort of Tap o’ Noth. Then archaeologists started digging around it. Since 2011, excavations led by Gordon Noble of the University of Aberdeen have uncovered the remains of a powerful Pictish stronghold, and the Craw Stane turned out to stand at the entrance to it. It is one of the very few Pictish stones still in the spot where it was first raised, and now one of the few whose original setting we understand.

The stone

The stone is a rough pillar carved with two symbols: a fish, usually taken to be a salmon, above the creature known as the Pictish beast, an animal with a long snout and a curling crest that has never been identified with anything real. Canmore dates the carving to around the 7th century.

What the excavations found

The digs revealed a series of ditches and timber palisades enclosing timber and turf buildings, dated to the 5th and 6th centuries, with the Craw Stane standing at the entrance to the inner ditch. The finds were remarkable for the time and place: pottery from the Mediterranean, glass from France, Anglo-Saxon metalwork, and evidence that fine metal objects were being made on site. The excavators describe it as a high-status and possibly royal Pictish centre. A carefully made sandstone grave nearby has been described as the burial of a Pictish prince or princess. The settlement seems to have ended after a serious fire.

Rhynie has another famous carving from the same site: the Rhynie Man, a stone showing a fierce figure with bared teeth carrying an axe, found by a farmer in 1978 and now displayed at Aberdeenshire Council’s headquarters in Aberdeen. It may once have stood by the enclosure’s outer ditch.

Visiting

The stone stands in a field on the south side of Rhynie and is visible from the road. It is on working farmland, so stay on the field edge, close gates and keep dogs on leads. In Rhynie village, several more symbol stones are set up in the old kirkyard. Above it all rises Tap o’ Noth, crowned by one of the most impressive vitrified hill forts in Scotland, a steep but rewarding walk.

Around Rhynie

Rhynie has its own battle. In October 1571 the Gordons beat the Forbeses at Tillieangus, just outside the village, in a feud that ran on to a second fight at Craibstone near Aberdeen. This is Gordon country, ruled from Huntly Castle to the north, and in 1645 the Gordon horse helped win the Battle of Alford on the Don to the south.

West over the hill, the remote Cabrach Distillery is a community revival in old whisky-smuggling country. To the east at Kennethmont, Ardmore makes one of the few peated malts in Aberdeenshire. The mysterious Newton Stone is a short drive east. For more stones with a story, see our guide to the famous stones of Scotland.

Sources

• Canmore — Rhynie, Craw Stane (site 17199).
• Gordon Noble and others, Rhynie Environs Archaeology Project, University of Aberdeen.
• AOC Archaeology — An Early Medieval Enclosure at Rhynie, Aberdeenshire.