Great crown of stone (2020)
The stone circle was redesigned by Duncan Lunan with the aim of correcting some problems with the initial version, retaining what worked, and adding functionality that the initial version did not, in a location that worked better. Renewal indeed. In March 2019, three years after the circle was removed and buried, it was launched to the public in a media event, where the stones stood exposed in their concrete plinths, bereft of soil or grass, exposed like grey teeth. This sketchy version of the stone circle was surrounded by mud, overlooking a luxury car dealership. At this time and for a while afterwards the stones stood alone, one of the first indicators of a shift from decontamination to construction. It is possible that in prehistory too megaliths followed acts of ritual decontamination of the land, offering cleansing and rebirth, and so it is appropriate that the monument took on this important liminal role at Sighthill, a Sighthill once again in transition. Before the 2020 Covid lockdowns began, the stone circle stood proud on an earthen mound surrounded by the skeletons of new buildings: the monument was starkly visible, breaking the horizon for drivers heading west on the M8, rising from a dip under the A804. This great crown of stone was a place-marker – the poster child – for the renewed Sighthill. For at time there was even the potential that the stone circle could become Glasgow’s Angel of the North, a symbol of the city, but it has since become visually lost through landscaping, out of sight yet on a hill, subsumed once again back into Sighthill.