Lochmaben Stone

Around 3275 BC a circle of large stones was raised on the Solway shore, enclosing an oval of roughly half an acre. This date rests on a radiocarbon reading from mixed oak and hazel charcoal recovered from the lower fill of the principal stone's pit, as reported by Aubrey Burl. The Lochmaben Stone itself is a glacial erratic of weathered granite, and its size made it a landmark on the flat plain long before the circle was built around it.

The stone's name carries the memory of the Celtic god Mabon or Maponus, from map, the Old Welsh for "son of", suggestive of a divine youth. He is said to have been the patron of the Kingdom of Rheged, and dedications to his cult have been found at Birrens, Brampton, Chesterholm (Vindolanda), Corbridge and Ribchester. The Romans equated him with Apollo. Sometime in the seventh century a monk at the monastery of Ravenna compiled a list of towns and road-stations across the Roman Empire, the document now known as the Ravenna Cosmography, which lists a 'Locus Maponi' tentatively identified with this site.

By the later medieval period the stone had become a well-recognised marker on the Scottish Marches, treated by the Scots as the southernmost limit of their realm. Raiding parties gathered here before crossing into England, and Scottish armies assembled at the stone before major incursions or defensive operations; an army was ordered to muster here as late as 6 February 1557. It may earlier have served as a tribal assembly point.

In 1398 the stone hosted a cluster of border business. An exchange of prisoners took place when the Dukes of Rothesay and Lancaster, representing Scots and English, met here and released their captives without ransom, with any ransoms already paid to be returned. In the same year an indenture was made at "Clochmabenstane" for the men of Tyndale and Redesdale to meet from Whitsunday to Michaelmas at Kershope Bridge, and a further agreement had the men of Galloway, Nithsdale, Annandale and Crawford Muir meet the Wardens of the West March here for redress of claims.

In 1473 the Scottish and English ambassadors agreed that the Marcher Wardens should meet more frequently at six recognised sites on the marches: Newbyggynfurde, Redaneburn, Gammyllispethe, Belle, Loumabanestane and Kershopebrig, the meetings rotating through these venues. On 26 March 1494 the commissioners of both countries met at the stone to settle the long-running dispute over the "Fish Garth" across the River Esk. A sixteenth-century reference records "Loughmaben Stone standyng in Scotland, wher we have beyn accustomyd to keipe days of marches."

In the 1800s the tenant of Old Graitney farm set his farmhands to bury the three remaining stones, which spoiled his field and obstructed his machinery. One had been completely buried and another partly sunk when the proprietor, Lord Mansfield, arrived and halted the work. The stone continued to serve as a local gathering place into comparatively recent times.

In 1982 the stone fell over. Excavations before its re-erection showed it had been set into a shallow pit; no artefacts were recovered, though the charcoal from the lower fill supplied the radiocarbon date. Later a local tradition held that a farm worker moved the stone with an excavator in search of "treasure" beneath it. The local primary school attended an official re-erection ceremony, reported by the Dumfries and Galloway Standard on 22 September 1995.