It was the first stone circle to be built in Britain in 3,000 years, Margaret Thatcher hated it, but now Glasgow council wants the Sighthill megalithic demolished to help its bid for the 2018 youth Olympics

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

A diverse coalition of campaigners - the musicians Julian Cope and Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite amongst them - are fighting to save the first astronomically aligned stone circle to be built in Britain in 3000 years.

Sighthill Stone Circle, which sits in the heart of post-industrial Glasgow, has an obvious kinship with Britain's other megalithic sites like Stonehenge and Callanish.

The principal difference – aside, perhaps, from the graffiti-tagged monoliths – is that this site was built in 1979 rather than in, say, the Bronze Age.

It is now threatened by a Glasgow City Council plan to redevelop this deprived corner of the city as part of its bid for the 2018 Youth Olympic Games.

With few facilities and low employment in the area, Glasgow has committed to a £250 million pound regeneration of Sighthill, a move which could be brought forward should the YOG2018 bid prove successful. The council insists the overall redevelopment will happen, regardless of the bid's outcome.

Duncan Lunan at Sighthill stone circle Photograph: Linda Lunan,

Supporters of the stone circle argue that the council's plans for the site – which include accommodation for athletes – could be easily modified to preserve what they see as an important part of Scotland's scientific heritage.

The circle has an unlikely provenance in a much older attempt to develop the area, after the demise of Glasgow's chemical industry that was once among the biggest in the world.

Landscaped as a public space, Sighthill became the responsibility of the Glasgow Parks department which successfully applied for a £4 million grant under the Callaghan Government's Jobs Creation Scheme.

When a winning entry in a schools astronomy competition suggested that a new Stonehenge be built in one of the city's parks, the council recruited Duncan Lunan, a science writer and former student of Glasgow University astronomer Archie Roy.

When offered the unprecedented job of building a modern stone circle Lunan hesitated:

I gave it a second thought because I knew it would disrupt my writing – which it did.

Along with technical supervisor John Braithwaite – an amateur astronomer and the late father of Mogwai guitarist Stuart Braithwaite – Lunan guided the painstaking removal of the stones from Kilsyth quarry to their present astronomically precise alignment.

An RAF Sea King brings in the midwinter sunset market stone Photograph: Gavin Roberts

Their big breakthrough was to enlist the assistance of a Royal Navy helicopter to lower seven of the stones into their sockets. Lunan recalls:

Over a thousand local children were given the day off school to watch the airlift. It really was quite a spectacle.

But the ensuing media coverage on the eve of Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1979 turned the event into a spectacle of an altogether different kind: a political caricature of excessive public spending.

Six days after the election, I remember our shop steward coming in and saying that he had just heard Thatcher on the radio: 'we shall be restoring full employment by the end of 1980 and there will be no more nonsense like the Glasgow Parks astronomy project'.

Though the plug was pulled even before the site could be properly landscaped, Lunan and Braithwaite had at least completed their original design.

What was unfinished were plans for public signage and a plaque of dedication – previously agreed by Glasgow city council – to four key figures in ancient astronomy, all with close links to the city.

Graffiti aside, the site has lain without interpretation or explanation for over thirty years. Paradoxically, the current threat to the site has brought renewed recognition of its scientific and cultural significance from a number of prominent figures as well as from the local community.

Residents are keen to see inward investment but many also see the stones as a rallying place. At midsummer last year, the stones were used for the Sighthill Solstice – an event bringing together arts groups with the local Sighthill youth centre. A local Highland games was held there in September.

The recent petition to save the stone circle has attracted nearly 1200 signatures while Bob Doris MSP has put down a motion in the Scottish Parliament calling on the council to reconsider its plans.

Prominent critics of the plans include the current Astronomer Royal, Professor John Brown, writer Alasdair Gray, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite, artist Douglas Gordon and rock musician and antiquary, Julian Cope.

Glasgow city council have stressed that no final decision has yet been taken about the stones. They also point out that regeneration will bring vital new homes, jobs and facilities to the area.

For Alasdair Gray, however, there is something 'grimly familiar' about proposals that that start with a clean slate. There is a long history of 'Glasgow planners believ[ing] that to renovate they must first devastate'.

The campaigners concede that the area needs opportunities but maintain that the stones should be part of a development strategy rather than an impediment to it. Braithwaite argues:

The potential to bring people to the area is huge. It's just ten minutes walk from the city centre.

In response to the claim that the site is little known, Braithwaite is uncompromising:

What city in the world would have a stone circle and not even have a sign saying what it is? There is a political aspect to it too. Letting it be destroyed would be like letting Thatcher win – a victory of despair over hope.

Like the stones at Callanish and the Ring of Brodgar, the original purpose of the site has become slightly obscured by the passing of time – even if it is only 30 years old rather than 3000.

Beyond their ritual significance, there is a sense in which these monuments proclaim the cultural existence of the communities that built them: defiant assertions of people over their place. No one said Stonehenge was fiscally prudent.