Archaeology Notes
Event ID 648448
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Archaeology Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/648448
NC21SE 2 26243 11189.
(NC 2624 1118) Chambered Cairn (NR)
OS 6"map, (1966)
Chambered cairn, Orkney-Cromarty group with a polygonal chamber. It is situated on the steep moorland hillside at over 550 ft OD, and is now heather-covered. It has a diameter of about 40 ft and a height of about 8 ft. The SE side of the mound projects slightly on plan and a spur seems to run to the SW for about 14 ft, both features suggesting the presence of horns. However, on the N (uphill) side the edge is well-defined, without horns although there is enough space between the cairn and the rise of the hillside for them to have been built. The entrance has been from the ESE side where two large lintel stones are visible at the cairn edge. From the chamber it can be seen that the passage (and possibly an antechamber) are choked with stones. The passage is about 11 ft long. The lintel at its inner end is in place and exposed, resting on a pair of transverse portal stones set 1 ft 9 ins apart, 3 ft 6 ins high above the present floor level. The chamber is fully exposed due to the removal of the roof. It is polygonal, 9 ft long by 5 ft 9 ins wide, and built of four upright stones with neatly laid walling of horizontal slabs between. There is an end-stone facing the entrance, and two stones on the SW which together with the obliquely set portal stones form most the chamber wall on this side. On the NE side there is only one stone. Between it and the end-stone is a shallow recess, 4 ft 6 ins wide and 2 ft 6 ins deep, entirely built of masonry and roofed by oversailing slabs at a height of 3 ft 6 ins.
Finds: In Dunrobin Castle Museum, Golspie. 'Several small fragments of unornamented pottery, parts of a single vessel with walls about 1/4 in thick were recovered on excavation. They are coarse in quality, the clay being inmixed with numerous small pieces of quartz and stone. The interior surface is blackened and smooth. (Not found in 1957).'
A S Henshall 1963; RCAHMS 1911.
A chambered cairn, as described by Miss Henshall.
Visited by OS (G H P) 5 June 1962 and (N K B) 23 June 1980.
