Balfarg is a prehistoric monument complex in Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland. It is protected as a scheduled monument. [1] With the development of Glenrothes new town in the latter half of the 20th Century an adjacent residential area was developed around the complex carrying the same name.
The Balfarg henge, located at grid reference NO282031 , is part of a larger prehistoric ceremonial complex. It contains the remnants of a stone circle which has been partly reconstructed.
The Balfarg henge was excavated between 1977 and 1978 by Roger Mercer prior to the development of a new housing estate, work which established that the two extant standing stones were part of a circle that stood within the henge. The two surviving specimens lined the north-west oriented entrance to the henge. [2]
Within the 64.9 metres (213 ft) diameter henge were found broken Neolithic pottery, burnt wood and bone which had been dumped on the site prior to the erection of a 25 metres (82 ft) wide timber circle of 16 wooden posts. Two especially large portal timbers stood on the west side of the circle. It is likely that the henge was built after these phases of activity. Grooved ware pottery found in the postholes dates to around 2900 BC. Some of the vessels may have been used to hold black henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) which is a poison but also a powerful hallucinogen. [3]
Five further concentric post rings had also been erected outside and inside the main wooden circle although these were made from narrower timbers and may have supported hurdling or a palisade.
Later during the site's use the timber circle was replaced by two concentric stone circles, again with an entrance to the west and some time after this the henge was constructed. Around 1900 BC a pit was dug in the centre of the stone circles and in it was placed the body of a young man along with a flint knife and a handled beaker.
Later excavation between 1983 and 1985 by Barclay and Russell-White demonstrated that there were scatters of earlier Neolithic pits round the Balfarg henge. These excavations also discovered a second henge, which surrounded a Neolithic timber mortuary enclosure. A second such timber structure lay just outside the henge, partly overlain by a complex of two burial cairns. [4]
Nearby is the Balbirnie Stone Circle, which is also part of the complex.
The Balfarg Henge now serves as a centre piece greenspace for the local area with modern housing developed in crescents around the monument. A modern residential area which was started in the late 1970s and was later expanded over subsequent decades now surrounding the henge. Former traditional steadings and farm buildings within the area have also since been converted into housing and now form part of the larger modern estate. The streets in the original parts of the estate developed by the former Glenrothes Development Corporation were named after lochs in Scotland, for instance Affric Road and Tummel Road.
The Gilvenbank Hotel, Bar and Restaurant (formerly Jaguars (1982 to 1988) and The Snooty Fox (1988 to 2006)) is also located in the area close to Gilvenbank Park. Located adjacent to the hotel is the Balfarg care home. In 1995 a tradition left Balfarg when the local fete moved from the henge to nearby Gilvenbank Park. The Coul burn flows southeast through Balfarg on to Balbirnie Park and then joins the River Leven further east near Windygates.
Buses run every twenty minutes to and from Balfarg and the Kingdom Shopping Centre in Glenrothes town centre. The area is in the catchment of Pitcoudie Primary and St Pauls Roman Catholic Primary schools. High Schools Glenwood and Glenrothes High and St Andrews RC in Kirkcaldy have students from the area.
Stonehenge is a prehistoric megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, two miles (3 km) west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around 13 feet (4.0 m) high, seven feet (2.1 m) wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connecting horizontal lintel stones. Inside is a ring of smaller bluestones. Inside these are free-standing trilithons, two bulkier vertical sarsens joined by one lintel. The whole monument, now ruinous, is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice and sunset on the winter solstice. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the densest complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred tumuli.
The Ring of Brodgar is a Neolithic henge and stone circle about 6 miles north-east of Stromness on Mainland, the largest island in Orkney, Scotland. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Heart of Neolithic Orkney.
Newgrange is a prehistoric monument in County Meath in Ireland, located on a rise overlooking the River Boyne, 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) west of the town of Drogheda. It is an exceptionally grand passage tomb built during the Neolithic Period, around 3200 BC, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Newgrange is the main monument in the Brú na Bóinne complex, a World Heritage Site that also includes the passage tombs of Knowth and Dowth, as well as other henges, burial mounds and standing stones.
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A stone circle is a ring of standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being built from 3000 BC. The best known examples include those at the henge monument at Avebury, the Rollright Stones, and elements within the ring of standing stones at Stonehenge. Scattered examples exist from other parts of Europe. Later, during the Iron Age, stone circles were built in southern Scandinavia.
Grooved ware is the name given to a pottery style of the British Neolithic. Its manufacturers are sometimes known as the Grooved ware people. Unlike the later Beaker ware, Grooved culture was not an import from the continent but seems to have developed in Orkney, early in the 3rd millennium BC, and was soon adopted in Britain and Ireland.
Durrington Walls is the site of a large Neolithic settlement and later henge enclosure located in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site in England. It lies 2 miles (3.2 km) north-east of Stonehenge in the parish of Durrington, just north of Amesbury in Wiltshire. The henge is the second-largest Late Neolithic palisaded enclosure known in the United Kingdom, after Hindwell in Wales.
The Sanctuary was a stone and timber circle near the village of Avebury in the south-western English county of Wiltshire. Excavation has revealed the location of the 58 stone sockets and 62 post-holes. The ring was part of a tradition of stone circle construction that spread throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, over a period between 3300 and 900 BCE. The purpose of such monuments is unknown, although archaeologists speculate that the stones represented supernatural entities for the circle's builders.
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