Twelve Apostles Stone Circle
| The Twelve Apostles | |
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The tallest upright stones
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| Coordinates | 55°05′52″N 3°39′06″W / 55.097804°N 3.651705°WCoordinates: 55°05′52″N 3°39′06″W / 55.097804°N 3.651705°W |
 Location of The Twelve Apostles in Dumfries and Galloway
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The Twelve Apostles (grid reference NX9470079400) is a large stone circle located between the villages of Holywood and Newbridge, near Dumfries, Scotland. It is the seventh largest stone circle in Britain and the largest on the mainland of Scotland. It is similar in design to the stone circles of Cumbria, and is considered to be an outlier of this group. Its south-westerly arrangement aligns it with the midwinder sunset.
The circle is composed of eleven stones, of which five are earthfast; however, there were originally twelve. A plan taken by Francis Grose in 1789 shows twelve stones and the First Statistical Account, published two years later, records the same number. One of the stones was removed before 1837, when the New Statistical Account entry for Holywood was compiled. The 25 inch Ordnance Survey map of 1850 shows twelve stones in the circle, but this is due to an accidental spot of blue ink on the original plan which was carried on to published work.
Local traditions recorded in the nineteenth century associate the stones with the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, and link the removed twelfth stone with Judas Iscariot.W. C. Lukis notes that in one tradition the stones were said to be set up by the apostles.
The tallest upright stone is around 1.9 meters tall. The longest, lying in the south-western sector, is 3.2 meters long. The circle measures 89 meters at its maximum diameter. It is not a true circle in formation; rather, it is an example of Alexander Thom's Type B 'flattened circle'.
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