Eggerness

In their article ‘Rock Carvings in the Garlieston Area’ (TDGNHAS-3-LXII,1987, p. 33-9), Morris & van Hoek wrote:
“In 1986 and 1987 rock art was reported in the area just north of Garlieston for the first time. Some of it is of special interest and unusual type for the British Isles.
In all, eight sites have been located, six on the farm of Eggerness, and two on the adjoining farm of Penkiln. All are on outcrop greywacke rock. The carvings include a very big number of spirals and on two sites most of the carvings are zoömorphic. Such zoömorphic carvings are rare in Prehistoric Rock Art in Brtain. Most of the sites have been covered up completely in order to preserve the engravings.” Followed by the description of the Penkiln 1-2 and Eggerness 1-4 panels.
For the panels Eggerness 5 and 6, the text continues:
“Also situated on Eggerness are the following two sites with zoömorphic carvings. For security and agricultural reasons their locations is not given but further details, and color photographs by Mrs Wendy Ronan, have been lodged with the National Monuments Record. The sites have been re-covered with turf and neither they nor any of the sites on Eggerness should be searched for or visited without prior arrangements.”
We visited the site in September 2000 but could not locate a single carving. Not only were they soundly covered, but the given gridrefs were (a bit?) out of the way also.
In May 2008, after making proper arrangements with the land- and farmowner, Suzanne Forster, Ank Brouwer, Brian Kerr and I were allowed to uncover and photograph panel 4 and 5. The friendly farmer pointed out the location of the (domino) panel-3, which is on a vertical rock wall but unreachable now due to nettles and gorse vegetation. Furthermore we located the (spirals) panel-1 but the topsoil was solidly “glued” to the very fragmented rock so we left it to avoid any damage.
As an unexpected bonus, the farmer drove us to panel-6 with the horses. Soon we stood eye-to-eye with probably most unique carvings in the whole of the UK.
These carvings were last seen by Ronald Morris, Maarten van Hoek and Kaledon Naddair in 1986-7 and 1989.
In 1989, Kaledon Naddair discovered another horse. He wrote: “Due to temporarily removing more turf another pocked ‘horse’ at the top of the rock-slope was found. It holds the same posture as the other three main ‘horses’ (D&ES, 1989a)“.
We regarded it a great privilege to record these carvings, except Kaledon’s one, with the currently available technology; digital camera and the side-flash.
The visit was highlighted by the find of yet another horse, laying on its side in the hoof motif like a veal in its mothers uterus; a really moving design!

The grid refs for these carvings will not be added to the site for added protection for these very rare and unique carvings. The area contains carvings of deer, horses, horse shoe as well as the more common type of cup and ring carving. Panels that contain both cup and ring as well as horses and deer are very very rare, and put these carvings amongst the most important we have in Galloway and indeed the UK.