Field Visit
Date May 1982
Event ID 1101624
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1101624
This cairn measured 21.6m from N to S by 20m transversely and 2.7m in height; there were no kerbstones, but Craw states that the central area of the cairn (14m by 13.4m) was enclosed within a bank of stones some 2.4 m thick and standing 0.6m high externally and 0.3m internally. A little to the N of the centre there was a massive cist aligned N and S and set into a pit dug into the natural gravel, with the top of the cover slab about 150mm below ground level. The underside of the capstone, which measures 2m by 1.07m and up to 0.35m in thickness, is decorated with about forty cupmarks and at least ten axeheads. The cist had been additionally protected by eighteen flat slabs which lay on top of the capstone, two overlapping the edge of the cover stone at the ends of the cist and the others arranged along the edges and across the top. The cist, which measures 1.6m by 0.65m and 0.6m in depth, contained soil, in which were found a human molar tooth, a little ochre, and a few fragments of charcoal. The inner face of the N end-slab was decorated with two large axeheads, their edges to the top. To the S of the central cist an arrangement of slabs suggested that there might have been a further burial, but none was found; at either end of the setting, however, there were two upright slabs, one of which, at the E end, was decorated with two pecked circles each about 180mm in diameter. This slab is now in the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. A second grave was found 3.3m NE of the central cist; here an oval pit dug into the natural gravel measured 1.5m by 0.7m and 0.8m in depth and contained an ox molar and fragments of charcoal.
RCAHMS 1988, visited May 1982.
