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Cup-and-ring-marked stone at Down is a prehistoric rock art panel carved into the local bedrock of Hawick Group wacke. The stone displays the characteristic cup-shaped depressions surrounded by concentric rings that are typical of cup-and-ring art produced during the Bronze Age across Britain and Ireland. The wacke substrate—a hard sedimentary rock formed in the Wenlock period—has weathered the passage of millennia, preserving these deliberate incisions as evidence of ritual or territorial marking by prehistoric communities.
The monument sits within a landscape shaped by the underlying geology of the area, where exposures of Wenlock wacke provided both the natural canvas and practical material for such artistic endeavour. Cup-and-ring carvings of this type appear across upland regions of Northern Ireland and Scotland, often sited on prominent outcrops or ridgelines with commanding views. Their precise purpose remains debated among archaeologists, though interpretations range from hunting magic and territorial claims to calendrical or shamanistic significance.
The site is protected by the Historic Environment Division of the Department for Communities under monument reference 7615, ensuring its preservation as an irreplaceable record of Bronze Age artistic expression. Such rock art panels offer rare direct access to the symbolic world of prehistoric peoples, unmediated by the fragmentary survival of portable objects or settlement remains that typically dominate our archaeological understanding.
Cup-&-ring-marked stone is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 7615. View the official record →
Cup-and-ring-marked stone at Down is a prehistoric rock art panel carved into the local bedrock of Hawick Group wacke. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 7615.
Cup-&-ring-marked stone dates from the prehistoric period, and is classified as a cup-&-ring-marked stone. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Cup-&-ring-marked stone is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Ni. The official designation reference is 7615.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Raised rath (1.9 km), Raised rath (2.4 km), Motte (2.9 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Cup-&-ring-marked stone's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Cup-&-ring-marked stone stands on Hawick Group, bedrock that formed in the Wenlock. The rock here is wacke.