A recumbent stone circle above Tarland, the north-east Scottish kind with one great stone laid flat between two standing uprights
Open to visitorsa Historic Environment Scotland site — many are free to wander; staffed ones charge and keep set hours
Standing remainssubstantial fabric survives to stand in front of
The stone circles of north-east Scotland have a feature found almost nowhere else: a recumbent, a single massive stone laid on its side low in the ring, flanked by two tall uprights. Tomnaverie is a clear, well-kept example, set on a low rocky knoll above the village of Tarland in Aberdeenshire. The recumbent and its flankers sit on the south-western arc, open to the southern sky, and from the circle the view runs out to the hills of the Cairngorms. People built circles like this around four to four and a half thousand years ago, late in the Neolithic and into the early Bronze Age. Archaeologists excavated and restored the site around the year 2000, so the layout you see is close to the original. Historic Environment Scotland looks after it, and it is free and open.
