Layout and Location - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 125

vey (1858). This enquiry was actually to lie fallow until after the
project ended, because it went off down a side trail which proved
eventually to be of considerable potential importance.
On the day before the helicopter operation, as the lunar stones
were being put into position (see Chap. 7 ), up on the hilltop came
a representative of the South of Scotland Electricity Board. He had
come to see whether the Navy was still interested in landing on
the former power station site to refuel. While we were discussing
the next day's events, he looked around at the incomplete circle
and said, “You know, this reminds me of the prehistoric one they
took us to see in Drumchapel when I was a kid.”
This riveted our attention because until then, we had no
leads as to prehistoric circles in or around Glasgow. Our visitor
could tell us only that the year was 1938 or '39, and the reason
his school class was taken to see the site was because it was
going to be built over with a petrol station. After the circle was
built and the activity died down, I tried to pursue the lead with
the late Chris Boyce, who was then a librarian with the Daily
Record . Nothing came to light from the newspaper's files, and
Chris suggested the Glasgow room at the Mitchell Library. I was
by then too involved with the schools and exhibitions to take it
further, but when Alan Maclean joined the project in autumn of
1979 I asked him to pursue the enquiry. Oddly (see below), Alan
drew a blank at the Mitchell, whose staff referred him to the Ord-
nance Survey archives in Edinburgh.
Now a problem arose. The Astronomy Project had been cut-
ting corners on established District Council procedures for more
than a year in the drive to get results, and that was beginning to
catch up with us. In particular there had been a lot of traveling
outside the normal limit of the city boundary (see Chap. 6 ) , uncon-
ventionally claimed back through petty cash, and now there had
been a clampdown. If Alan had to go to Edinburgh he must put in
for authorization and obtain a railway warrant. The warrant never
arrived and the trip was never made. Later my first wife Linda
went back to Glasgow Room at the Mitchell, on the off chance
that something might have been missed.
The results were dramatic. What went wrong during Alan's
visit remains a mystery, but there was in fact so much mate-
rial on the prehistoric circle and on Sighthill that Linda could