Around the Stone of Setter, Eday

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 (8:07 AM)

“Pass over the mossy hills by a loch … till I come to the most remarkable standing stone in this island. It is called by the inhabitants Sator’s stone, and measures in height 15 feet, 5½ broad, and only 9 inches thick, greatly ragged by age and the weather.”

Rev George Low. Tour thro’ the North Isles and part of the Mainland of Orkney, 1778

The Stone of Setter, Eday. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

By Sigurd Towrie

“Through this Countrey we find several Obelisks of very high and great stones set up, as one in the Isle of Eda…”

Rev John Brand. A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland, Pightland Firth and Caithness. (1701)

The Stone of Setter, one of Orkney’s most impressive monoliths, towers over a landscape dotted with prehistoric remains at the northern end of Eday. Standing to the south-east of the Vinquoy, Huntersquoy and Braeside chambered cairns, the north-south-facing stone is 4.5 metres high, making it one of Orkney’s tallest megaliths.

As Professor Mark Edmonds explained:

“These dramatic monoliths were often set in commanding positions. Standing to a height of four and a half metres, the Stone o’ Setter occupies a prominent vantage over Calf Sound and the Mill Loch valley towards the north end of Eday.

“Well placed to be seen from the sea, it also includes several tombs in its viewshed. This made it a focal point, a place where the history of the surrounding land could be taken in with a gesture.” [1]

Most of Orkney’s surviving standing stones took advantage of the geology, using easily quarried, arrow-straight slabs. But it was the red sandstone found in Eday that was, unsurprisingly, selected for Setter megalith.

This being a softer material means that weathering and erosion over the millennia has given the stone a distinctive appearance. Tapering from its peak, it vaguely resembles a giant stone hand reaching skyward. Despite its dramatic presence, documented traditions and beliefs linked to the stone are scant.

The Setter Stone also seems to have been largely ignored by the early antiquarians and chroniclers. One of the few who did record it (briefly) was the 19th century antiquary James Farrer.

Around 1855, Farrer’s sights were firmly set on Eday. Accompanied by the landowner Robert Hebden, a Londoner who had bought the island at an auction in 1848, he targeted the many archaeological sites on the island and its immediate neighbour, the Calf of Eday.

While not naming the stone, describing the area Farrer wrote:

“There are also the remains of standing stones, the stumps of which, in some instances, only just appear above ground, extending over a great part of the main island of Eday; only one now remains uninjured, save by time, and doubtless owes its security to the determination of the proprietor, Mr Hebden, to preserve from destruction these interesting relics of antehistoric times.

“This stone is 19 feet high, 7 feet wide, and 16 inches thick. It has possibly been both higher and thicker, as the upper part is broken, and the sides partially decayed during its long exposure to the weather.” [1b]

No doubt due to the megalith’s irregular shape, Farrer’s measurements are at odds to those recorded by the Stromness minister Rev George Low, who declared in 1778 that it was “…in height 15 feet, 5½ broad, and only 9 inches thick.” [2]

The dimensions recorded by the Royal Commission in 1946 were:

“It is 15’6″ high approx., 5’6″ wide at base and 7′ wide across the north side at 5′ above ground. The thickness varies from 7 1/2″ at base to 14″ at the middle.”

Returning to Low’s account, his focus was on text apparently carved into the stone in 1755, three years before his visit:

“Sator’s Stone [3] is inscribed with the following short history of an honest Surgeon of a man-of-war who sojourned some time in the Orkneys.

“Andreas Matheson hucusque fugit a Veneficiis Ducis Weller 1755

“This Gentleman with good sense and some learning was so frightened for his Captain’s Spells that he did not think himself safe from their influence till he arrived at this distant corner, and even on occasion imagined they reached him in Eda.”

Low translated the Latin text as “Andrew Matheson fled here from the Sorcerer Captain Weller”, which explains the curious reference to Weller’s “spells” and Matheson’s flight north to evade their influence.

Despite the somewhat fanciful nature of the tale, there is no doubt that the two men were contemporaries.

Records show that on July 10, 1747, Captain John Weller of the royal yacht Dublin requested the appointment of a new surgeon “in place of Mr Matheson” [4]. Just four days earlier, Matheson had been deemed unfit to serve on health grounds and tendered his resignation. [5]

Weller himself resigned in 1751, thought to be due to ill health because he died early in 1753 [6] – two years before Matheson carved his message in Eday.

Unsurprisingly, Captain Weller’s alleged sorcerous abilities are absent from the historical record.

If Low’s account of Matheson’s Latin inscription is true – and there is no reason to doubt it isn’t given the 18th and 19th century graffiti carved into monuments and stones across Orkney – then there might be a less fantastic explanation: poisoning rather than witchcraft.

But whatever story lay behind it, the strange inscription is long gone, erased from the surface of the soft sandstone by the elements.

“In passing across the island, we saw at some distance the great stone of Seter (sic) – a huge flag, rising about sixteen feet upright in the middle of a moor.”

Patrick Neill. A Tour through some of the Islands of Orkney and Shetland. (1806)

The Setter Stone. 2025. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

A second account explaining the Setter Stone’s origin was recorded by the Orcadian folklorist and historian Ernest Marwick in 1973. [7][8]

According to this unlikely tale, the monolith was erected by a local (unnamed) landowner, who began by excavating a deep socket-hole for the standing stone he intended to raise. He then heaped earth beside it to create a sloping ramp. On to this incline he laid the enormous stone, intending to rock it upright and into position.

Although they managed to get it on to the ramp, it seems the landowner’s men didn’t have the strength to push the megalith upright. So, to help overbalance the see-sawing stone, the landowner asked his wife to climb out and sit on the end hanging over the deep pit.

She clambered out across the semi-prone stone and, sure enough, it began to rock. As she jumped on one end, her husband and his entourage pushed the other. As the rocking motion increased, the faster the wife jumped and the harder the laird’s men pushed. Then, with a shriek, the woman tumbled into the socket-hole. Seconds later, the base of the standing stone crashed down on top of her.

According to the islanders, it was no secret that the laird detested his spouse, so no attempt was made to recover her crushed remains. Instead, the standing stone was pushed upright and the socket packed with rocks and earth.

It’s a bizarre tale and one which must post-date the 1845 New Statistical Account of Scotland, in which Rev John Simpson, the minister for Stronsay and Eday, wrote:

“Towards the north end of Eday, there is a standing stone in the midst of a lonely heath. It is about 17 feet in height; and, although a remarkable object, tradition says nothing as to its origin.”

A landscape rich in archaeology

“[In Eday] there is a standing monumental stone, similar to those which are observed in the other islands; several Picts-houses may also, be observed; and such a number of tumuli, especially on one spot, as may furnish reasonable grounds of conjecture, that this place has been the scene of military exploits and of blood, no less than of depredation.”

Rev George Barry. The History of the Orkney Islands. (1805)

The Setter chambered cairn under excavation. (📷 Jane Downes)

The chambered cairn at Setter, Eday. (📷 Downes et al.[9] ) — The chambered cairn at Setter, Eday. (📷 Downes *et al*.[9] )

As can be seen from Barry’s quote above, the Stone of Setter sits in a landscape rich in archaeology. As well as the three chambered cairns to the north-west, covered in previous posts, two smaller mounds lay around 200 metres south of the monolith.

These were thought to be Bronze Age until excavation in 1999 confirmed one to be a chambered “tomb” of a type not previously recorded in Orkney.

Measuring a mere five metres across, the structure revealed evidence of multiple phases. The original chamber was fashioned using large orthostats rather than stone walling. The north-facing entrance was later blocked by a large kerbstone, possibly at the same time a smaller, cist-like chamber was added to the west side.

The second cairn, lying c.75 metres to the south-west, covered a large stone cist that was probably contemporary with the “tomb”. [9]

Satellite view of the Fold of Setter, Eday. (📷 Google Maps)

Around 300 metres to the north of the Setter Stone are the remains of a huge, stone-built enclosure measuring c.85 metres in diameter – about twice the size of the Stones of Stenness. Known as the Fold of Setter, this roughly circular enclosure was apparently surrounded by a two-metre-wide wall.

In his 1856 account, Farrer wrote:

“There is a […] dyke […] on [Eday], inclosing an area 80 yards in diameter; it is almost entirely buried in the ground, and is seven feet thick at the base.” [1b]

The Orcadian antiquary George Petrie added in 1859:

“Beside a chambered tomb [presumably Braeside, which lies 123 metres to the north-west] … there is a circle of about 240 feet in diameter formed by a stone dyke seven feet across at the base. The dyke is almost concealed by peat or moss, and running in various directions up hill or down dale, other stone dykes may be traced, covered in some places by moss to a great depth.”[10]

Presumably the victim of stone robbing, little of the wall is visible today, the surviving sections overgrown by grass and heather. Survey work in the 1980s found no evidence of an entrance, although it was conceded that it may have been in one of the many sections where the wall was no longer visible. Thanks to modern satellite imagery, however, we can clearly see the extent of the enclosure (see above).

Near the centre was a low mound of stones, around two metres in diameter and surviving only to a height of 20 centimetres, although the fact neither Farrer nor Petrie mention it may mean the feature post-dates their Eday visits.

No excavation means we have no date for the Fold of Setter, so how it relates to the nearby chambered cairns or the Setter Stone, if at all, remains unclear.

Notes

[1] Edmonds, M. (2019) Orcadia: Land, Sea and Stone in Neolithic Orkney. Bloomsbury Publishing.
[1b] Farrer, J. (1856). Notice of Antiquities on the Isle of Eday, Orkney, recently examined by James Farrer, of Ingleborough Esq MP, Communicated by John Stuart, Esq, Secretary. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (Vol. 2, pp. 154-158).
[2] Low, G. (1778) Tour thro’ the North Isles and part of the Mainland of Orkney, 1778. In Old Lore Miscellany Vol XII (Published in 1920)
[3] Undoubtedly Low’s attempt to record the Orcadian pronunciation of the placename Setter.
[4] National Archives, Kew. https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C9786704
[5] https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=show_crewman&id=48659
[6] https://holyheadstoriesofaport.com/2024/05/01/admiral-john-henry-1731-to-1829-a-forgotten-holyhead-sailor/
[7] Marwick, E. Personal communication with R. G. Burgar, Eday, in 1973.
[8] Marwick, E. (1975) Strange Stones. In Robertson, J. D. M. (1991) An Orkney Anthology: The Selected Works of Ernest Walker Marwick (Vol 1). Scottish Academic Press: Edinburgh.
[9] Richards, C., Downes, J., Ixer, R., Hambleton, E., Peterson, R. & Pollard, J. (2013) Surface over Substance: the Vestra Fiold horned cairn, Mainland, Setter cairn, Eday, and a reappraisal of later Neolithic funerary architecture. In Richards, C. (ed) Building the Great Stone Circles of the North. Oxford: Windgather Press, 149 – 83.
[10] Petrie, G. (1927, but written in 1859) Primeval Antiquities of Orkney. In Proceedings of the Orkney Antiquarian Society Volume 5.