Publication Account
Date 1995
Event ID 1016787
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016787
The Ord is a low hill at the south end of Loch Shin. Prehistoric settlers here had ready access to both cultivable and grazing land, and salmon in the river for nine months of the year. There are remains of occupation from many different periods here: two neolithic chambered cairns, several bronze-age burial cairns, a large number of bronze-age or ironage hut circles, and post-medieval enclosures and ploughed fields.
The trail joins a track which leads uphill towards the television mast where a large cairn of bare stones stands near the top of the hill. This chambered cairn was excavated in 1967, and the chamber, antechamber and passage have been refilled, but some of the passage and its lintels are visible. The cairn is about 27m in diameter with a shallow forecourt. Cremation burials, sherds of pottery and flint flakes were found in the chamber, while bones from earlier burials may have decayed. When the tomb was blocked a stone platform with a boulder kerb, now grassgrown, was built round it. Above the collapsed corbels of the chamber a later cremation burial was found. On the highest part of the hill are the remains of another chambered cairn, of which only the large slabs in the chamber and passage remain, with mere vestiges of cairn material.
Scattered across the hill are a number of hut circles. Some 23 or so have been recorded, and it should be possible to locate at least 15 with the aid of the sketch plan given here. They may be of various dates and built and rebuilt over many centuries. There are also a large number of clearance cairns of unknown date dotted around this area, and a few traces of what may be prehistoric field walls. The cairns are particularly noticeable each side of the track before the path diverges from it. The hut circles are overgrown, but most make a noticeable circle in the heather. Occasionally the facing stones in the wall, or the entrance gap, usually on the southern side, can be seen. Just south of the chambered cairn on the very top of the hill is a bronze-age round ca irn with much of its kerb traceable. Immediately east of this is a hut circle in grass and so easier to see.
Other features on The Ord include the overgrown stone walls of more recent enclosures, within which and also outwith which the ridge and furrow of plough cultivation has been seen on air photographs and can be seen on the ground when the sun is low. Towards the south end of the area, with an enclosure wall crossing it and a recent fence intruding on its ditch is an enigmatic structure marked by two circles on the plan. This has been considered to be an unusual form of ditched ring cairn, but it consists of something very like a hut circle within a ditch and an outer bank, and it could be a fortified hut. There are a few similar sites in the Highlands, but none has yet been excavated.
There are more hut circles and clearance cairns between Lairg and Invershin on the slopes east of the A 836 as shown on the OS map; excavation has shown that these hut circles range in date from the 2nd millennium to the mid-1st millennium BC.
An audio-visual programme in the Ferrycroft Countryside Centre shows human impact on the landscape and archaeological sites.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).
