Archaeology Notes

Event ID 646029

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/646029

HY53NE 10 5633 3757.

(HY 5633 3757) Erd House (NR)

Standing Stones (NR)

OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed.,(1900).

An Orkney-Cromarty-type stalled cairn greatly robbed and now overgrown with turf and heather. It has measured about 102' by 58' and beside the ruined chamber the cairn still stands 5' to 6' high, but the edges are now indefinite due to severe robbing and peat-cutting, though the west side is less disturbed and probably represents approximately the original cairn edge.

The cairn material consists mainly of rounded stones instead of the usual flat slabs. The chamber is represented by a number of transverse upright slabs.

Seventeen feet behind the chamber where the cairn has been robbed almost to ground level there are several large slabs which suggest there may have been a second chamber, (HY53NE 18) although they may result from the destruction of the upper part of the existing chamber.

RCAHMS 1946; A S Henshall 1963, visited 1957.

As described and planned by Henshall, although there is no ground evidence of a second chamber.

Re-surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 24 July 1970.

More now survives of the cairn than of the cottage from which the name is taken. The stalled chamber, aligned N and S, has been exposed by an unrecorded excavation; in the body of the cairn to the N of the main chamber, at the end opposite from the passage, the slight remains of what may have been a second chamber can be detected.

RCAHMS 1984, visited October 1981.