NEOLITHIC SITES
Newbridge, Stone Circle and Cairn.
Heely or Hully Hill
Hully Hill ©
This name recalls the heel stone sun riser at Stonehenge.
The original circle was some 300 feet in diameter and only three stones remain. They are 4 feet 2 inches, 6 feet 7 inches and 7 feet 2 inches tall. The cairn, which is situated within the circle to the north west of its centre, is 100 feet in diameter and 10 feet high, surrounded by a modern stone wall. The cairn is believed to consist mainly of earth. It dates from the 2nd millennium BC.
The cairn is undoubtedly a later addition and built in the Bronze Age on the original stone circle site. A bronze rapier was removed from the cairn in the 19th century.
During the Equinox the sun viewed from this site rises from the south edge of Arthur's Seat, forming a very prominent and accurate foresight with a base of 9 miles.
This stone circle lies midway between the group of standing stones south of Arthur's Seat and the important centre of Cairnpapple in the Bathgate Hills.
The Lochend Stone that stands some 350 yards east may be an Equinox sunrise pointer. While the Cat Stone lying 2 miles north east and the Easter Norton stone lying 2 miles east may be outliers of this circle.
Lochend Stone
Sited some 100 yards east of the main Newbridge roundabout and 10 yards south of the south carriageway of the A8. This stone stands some 9 feet 3 inches high. It has been moved during road modernisation and its exact original position is uncertain.
Easter Norton
Gogar Stone ©
Standing in the field to the north of the Gogarstone Road to Ratho Village, it is not on the crest of the hill but on a slight ridge on the cultivated land. The stone is 4 feet 4 inches tall and 8 feet 5 inches in girth at the base.
Cat Stone
This stone is inaccessible as it now lies within a few yards of the main runway of Edinburgh Airport.
Cat Stone ©
There is an inscription in Latin on this stone ‘IN OCTUMULO IACIT VETTA F VICTI’ which has been translated as
‘In this tomb lies Vetta son/daughter of Victr’ or ‘In this mound lies Vetta son of Victa’.
A tumulus formerly stood some 60 yards west of this stone and when opened in 1824 was found to contain several complete skeletons. It also appears that a circle of flat stones some seven yards in diameter once surrounded the stone.
Tormain Hill
Cup & Ring Markings ©
This site, situated at the end of a public footpath, running south from the Ratho to Bonnington Road, but on private property,contains cup and ring marked stones. The markings occur on the rocky outcrops on the highest point of the ridge; they vary from a single cup on one boulder to a set on another boulder showing circles, concentric rings and gutters. One of the boulders is fractured in two places but it shows traces of 20-cup marks, two separate gutters as well as seven of the cups being surrounded by single rings.
Witches Stone
This stone was destroyed at the end of the First World War. It is however well documented in the Scottish Society of Antiquaries records. This pencil sketch gives us some idea of its shape.
Witches Stone ©
The cups, twenty two in all, were not a single vertical line. The top thirteen covered a distance of 6 feet, the remaining nine lie a few inches west and cover a distance of 3 feet. A large single cup lay 2 feet 3 inches west of the ninth cup mark.
Platt Hill
See separate articles Discovery of Double Burial Cist and Excavation.
Gogar Camp
From 1809-1835 many stone coffins were found on the lands of Gogar, no accurate account of these, before 1834, remains.
In 1834/5 when the Villa of Hanley House. was being built, a sandpit was excavated, (on the highest part of the ground about 100 yards to the north-east of the house) for building material. This excavation was 60 feet by 35 feet. It exposed about 24 stone coffins/cists, these all lay east to west at a depth of only 13 inches. Constructed of waterworn flagstones which form the bed of the river Almond at Newbridge and are similar to those at(Hully Hill).
Their shapes were as near these of wooden coffins as the slabs permitted. Both ends of the coffin were of single stones and the sides were sometimes of single stones, in which case one side of the coffin was wider than the other; but more frequently the sides were formed of four separate stones and then the coffins bulged in the middle. The bodies seem generally to have been laid on the bare gravel or on a thin plate of clay – slate and the tops or covers were of this substance, except one or two, where both the top and bottom covers were formed of flag - stones.
Due to the nature of the soil which is a loose gravel, and from the slightness of the covers, few of the coffins were in a perfect state when opened. Degradation by soil and water as well as ploughing meant that most of the graves contained only fragments of their occupants and not in a good state. Several however produced entire skeletons. No relics were found in these or any of the other graves.
The length of the coffins was from 5 to 6 feet, and the width from nine inches to 1 foot.
Whilst digging pits for the trees in the grounds other graves were found and in another excavation for building material yet another large group of graves was discovered. This contained a double burial (or at least more than two thigh bones) in a much larger coffin than the rest; one coffin was only 2˝ feet in length. Several coffins, which had been constructed using the side of a previous one, or perhaps a larger burial where the coffins for several bodies were constructed at the same time, each using a part of the other. A large group of human bones was found that had been interred without coffins and suggested a burial pit. (Could this be where the dead from the battle of the flashes were interred?)
Battle of the Flashes
On 27th August 1650 Leslie repulsed Cromwell’s forces in a battle on this site that lasted from 3pm-6pm. The Protector himself describes the battle: - “We marched westward of Edinburgh towards Stirling, which the Enemy perceiving, marched with as great expedition as was possible to prevent us; and the vanguards of both the Armies came to skirmish, - upon a place where bogs and passes made the access of each Army to the other difficult. We, being ignorant of the place, drew up, hoping to have engaged: but found no way feasible, by reason of the bogs and other difficulties. We drew up our cannon, and did that day discharge two or three hundred great shot upon them; a considerable number they likewise returned to us; and this was all that passed from each to the other. Wherein we had near twenty killed and wounded, but not one Commission Officer. The Enemy, as we are informed, had about eighty killed, and some considerable Officers. Seeing they would keep their ground, from which we could not remove them, and our bread being spent, - we were necessitated to go for a new supply: and so marched off about ten or eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning,”-first to camp at the Braid Hills and thence to Musselburgh. 25 days later Cromwell fought the Battle of Dunbar.
Towards the end of October 1835, another excavation was made at Hanley, behind the gardens, about 100 yards to the west of the first excavation. The space here was 50 feet in length and contained six coffins, four lying together in one corner.
The whole space over which these coffins were found was some 250 yards in length and over 50 yards wide.
Single coffins were found in other parts of the villa grounds and a few are said to have been found in the grounds of the adjoining villa, Gogar Burn.
Remains of a similar nature were discovered at Cramond in 1822.
Other sites exist outside the area but still geographically nearby, Kaimes Hill, Dalmahoy Hill and of course Cairnpapple.