Banffshire Field Club Transactions 1935-1946

Transactions OF THE BANFFSHIRE FIELD CLUB. THE STRATHMARTINE BanffshireTRUST Field Club The support of The Strathmartine Trust toward this publication is gratefully acknowledged. www.banffshirefieldclub.org.uk 107 SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1935. Rothiemay Castle and its interesting and historic surroundings were, by privilege of Col. Ian Forbes, D.S.O.. of Rothiemay, the venue of the annual summer meeting and ex- cursion of Banffshire Field Club held to- day in delightful weather. As for the past few years, Dr W. Douglas Simpson, the eru- dite Librarian of Aberdeen University, was the guest and the guide of the Club for the occasion, describing the features and history and associations of the ancient Castle and its environs in his characteristically happy and informative way and again placing the Club under a debt of gratitude to him for an interesting and enjoyable afternoon in one of the most charming corners of Banffshire. A particularly memorable feature of the visit was that the Club were privileged to be the first body of the kind to view the rediscovered foundations of the first Christian church built by St Drostan in the parish of Rothiemay, below the Castle, close by the Deveron, which were excavated recently by Col. Forbes and have been the subject of lecture and writings by Dr Simpson as one of the most interesting and important archaeological events in the North-East for long. The Club took oppor- tunity, on the occasion of Dr Simpson's ap- proaching marriage, to present him with a token of their good wishes and appreciation of his interest in the Club, the gift taking the appropriate nature of a case of old silver tea- spoons made in Banff about the year 1785 by William Byres, one of the last silversmiths who worked in the town of Banff. To the number of between 40 and 50, and re- presentative not only of Banff but also other parts of the county, members of the Club and friends assembled at Rothiemay Castle in the Banffshireearly afternoon under Fieldthe presidency ofClub Sheriff More, Banff, and were welcomed by Col. Forbes, along with Mrs Forbes and Miss Forbes, with whom was Dr Simpson. In the sunshine, on the lawn in front of the main en- trance of the Castle Dr Simpson addressed the 108 company, outlining the history of the Castle and the other ancient features of the parish. ROTHIEMAY By W. Douglas Simpson, M.A., D.Litt. One of the most remarkable facts that strikes the student of Scottish historical topo- graphy is its continuous development. In spite of the external violence which fills the pages of our country's chequered story, and notwithstanding all successive racial and cul- tural changes that have taken place during the past four or five thousand years, the local centres of population have in most cases re- mained surprisingly constant. There are many places in which this interesting fact can be studied, but nowhere is the evidence more complete than at Rothiemay. Here the traces of uninterrupted human occupation, and of local political and religious importance, are unmistakable and highly significant. From these indications it is possible to reconstruct a continuous story of the development of the locality from the Stone Age down to modern times. Such a story must in any case be one of enthralling interest: but at Rothiemay our attention is fixed by the additional fact that throughout this immense length of time the district has served as a kind of microcosm of Scotland—concerned in and reacting to all the great changes of the centuries, and mirroring their results in miniature. Few localities in the north of Scotland offer an ensemble of deeper import to the researcher who seeks to get underneath the carapace of text-book history and to expose the living tissues of the national life. Rothiemay is a district that offered many advantages to a primitive population, and thus was sure of being early settled. It con- Banffshiresists of a gently slopin g Fieldplateau descending Club, southward and westward, into the valleys of the Isla and the Deveron. The basins of these two rivers to-day form the finest agricultural land in the parish; but in ancient times what are now fertile haughs will have been largely BanffshireROTHIEMA YField CASTLE. Club 109 swamp, and the traces of prehistoric inhabita- tion are for the most part found on the slopes above, which combined shelter from the north and a warm sunward outlook with natural drainage, while not being so steep either to run off all surface water too rapidly or to pre- vent good deep soil from accumulating. The native granites (gabbro and norite) are mostly overlaid by a tough species of boulder clay- known in the north country as "pan"—obstin- ate and impermeable; and, where this is near the surface, soils become waterlogged and farming is poor; but as a rule the inhospitable clay is overlaid by a sufficient depth of good, kindly, arable soil. Four extensive peat mosses, all still worked—Moss of Rothiemay, Rowan Bauds, Moss of Mayen, and Craigbour- ach Moss—afford an ample ready-to-hand supply of fuel; and no doubt in primitive days (as indeed the remains of roots and trunks embalmed in the peat bogs show) large areas of the country were under forest. Such wood- lands would shelter an abundant supply of game—red deer and roe deer, wild cattle, boars and bears and elks; and the two rivers, then as now, must have been well stocked with salmon, eel and trout. The Prehistoric Period. It is hardly to be conceived that a locality so favoured could have failed to become popu- lated, as soon at all events as hunting gave place to agriculture as the staple industry of Scotland. Weapons and implements of the Stone and Bronze Ages do not seem to have been frequently picked up in Rothiemay, but sites of flint industries exist at Inchcorsie and Clashmanhillock. We picture the primitive flint knapper, sitting cross-legged over his task, and we think of him as the father of industry and handicrafts in our district; but these piles of discarded cores and flakes which Banffshiresurvive to mark his squatting-plac Fielde speak t o Club us of more than industry. For there is no native flint in Rothiemay, and the Stone Age craftsman obtained his raw material from the Buchan coast, five and thirty miles away. In exchange for the precious yellow stone the pro- duce of the interior would be sent down to the 110 folk who dwelt on the foreshores—game, pelts, timber perchance to make dug-out canoes. So to the discerning eye these derelict flint chip- pings tell of the beginnings not merely of industry but also of trade in Rothiemay. And trade means roads: so we think of the rough beaten tracks, linking up the scattered village communities, now circling round the great bogs, now diving deep into the dark recesses of the tangled forests—but always if possible clinging warily to the higher grounds where the outlook is good and the going sound and sure. In various parts of the higher moor- lands of Rothiemay there are traces of such ancient roads, some of which, for all we know, may go back to a very remote period. In due course the Age of Stone gave place to the Age of Bronze. In Rothiemay the presence of Bronze Age man is sufficiently vouched for by the great assemblage of round cairns belonging to this period, found on the ridge including Hill of Retanach, the highest ground in the parish, and Hill of Cairns. Clearly these cairns must represent the burial places of a considerable settled population. And that Rothiemay had become an important centre towards the close of this period is shown by the fragments of what has un- doubtedly been one of the largest stone circles in the north-east. Only four of the pillar stones now remain, besides the splendid recumbent stone, with its fine series of cup- marks, some of them ringed. This circle be- longs to a type peculiar to the district between the Dee and the Spey, and character- ised by the presence, on the southern (gener- ally the south-western) segment of the circle, of a large horizontally placed or recumbent stone set between two of the pillars. Within this district, and including one or two "out- liers," more than seventy circles of this spe- cial type have been noted, and many more have doubtless disappeared. Fantastic ideas have Banffshirebeen prevalent about theField meaning and usClube of these circles of standing stones. In particular they have been widely regarded as "Druidi- cal." although excavation has shown that they date from long before the Druids, and there is otherwise no evidence whatever that Druids 111 had anything to do with them. What is cer- tain is that they were used as burial places by the people of the late Bronze and early Iron Age. Much less is known about the pur- pose of the mysterious cup-marks. These are found not merely on stone circles and solitary standing stones, but on natural boulders and live rock surfaces. They occur in most parts of Scotland, and go back in time at least as far as the beginning of the Bronze Age. Their distribution, and other considerations, suggest that they were introduced via the west coast, from Ireland, and (more remotely) from Spain, where the closest parallels to our cup-mark patterns are found. At Avochie, also in our district, is another fine series of these cup- marks, on a great whinstone boulder.

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