File:The Feuars' Muir - March Stone 1 - geograph.org.uk - 992179.jpg

English: The Feuars' Muir - March Stone 1. This photo shows one of a series of 11 march stones on the Feuars' Muir (the historic name for an area of the Kilpatrick Hills). These stones and their purpose are explained in detail in the booklet "March Stones in the Kilpatrick Hills - A Feuars' Dispute of the 1850s" by Robert A. Rankin (1915-2001), who was Professor of Mathematics at Birmingham University (1951-54) and at the University of Glasgow (1954-82).

My intention with this series of items is not to supplant or replace the booklet (which contains a great deal more background information than is presented here), but simply to complement it by providing photographs of each stone, and, using technology that was not available to Professor Rankin, by recording the precise positions of the stones.

Professor Rankin gradually located all of these boundary stones when exploring this area between 1985 and 1987; in 1989, he learned the story behind them, as presented in the aforementioned booklet. The stones were set up in May 1857. They are made of limestone, and their visible portion is a cube, 18 inches to a side, although they extend for another 20 inches below ground level.

Their sides bear the letters B, J, or L, indicating land ownership by the 12th Lord Blantyre (B) or by two other landowners who are denoted by L and J (see the booklet for full details). Some faces bear a single letter, while other faces are divided in two by a vertical line, with a different letter in each half, depending on how the boundary intersects the stone.

There were originally intended to be twelve stones. Of these, number 11 was not set into the ground, but was left lying on its side, while stone 12 is missing, and was never, it seems, present on the moor.

Professor Rankin's booklet contains a hand-drawn map showing the position of the 11 stones (and the intended position for stone 12); the accuracy of that map is impressive, given that the distances were simply estimated by pacing them out. In 2008, using a compass, a 1:25000-scale OS map of this area, and the hand-drawn map, I was able to locate stones 1 to 10 in a single day; I did not find stone 11. In 2010, I returned with a GPS receiver to revisit stones 1 to 10, and to record their positions; I also managed to locate stone 11 on that occasion.

With the benefit of such modern technology, I have created an annotated satellite view, which is intended to supplement the map that appears in the booklet; see the end-note for the link. Clicking on the marker for a given stone will bring up information about that stone, including a graphical representation of the markings on each of its sides.

For convenience, the stones are indexed below, with their positions (by GPS, and all nominally ±3m), and with links to their corresponding photographs:

● Stone 1 – NS 46636 74590 – above. ● Stone 2 – NS 46898 74540 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992195 ● Stone 3 – NS 47420 74815 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992333 ● Stone 4 – NS 47434 74826 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992307 ● Stone 5 – NS 47485 74953 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992266 ● Stone 6 – NS 47524 74994 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992286 ● Stone 7 – NS 47514 75025 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992251 ● Stone 8 – NS 47076 74898 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992219 ● Stone 9 – NS 47118 75108 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992233 ● Stone 10 – NS 47324 75065 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/992367 ● Stone 11 – NS 47403 75207 – https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1738747

The present photo shows march stone 1, which lies close to the corner of the dry stone wall that is visible behind it; the stone is set in moorland that slopes down to the River Clyde. The distant hills in the background are on the far side of the river.

Each article in this series is linked to that of the next stone (in numerical order).

Next: 992195.