Archaeology Notes

Event ID 664331

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/664331

NH95SW 3 9312 5486

(NH 9312 5486) Stone Circles (NR)

Stone Coffin found AD 1903 (NAT)

OS 6" map (1959)

A cairn described as being surrounded by a "ditch and vallum and with a stone row extending from it in a SE direction". Cairn excavated in 1903 by Young and found to contain a cist.

Previous to excavation the cairn was a grass-grown mound surrounded by a ring of stones but digging showed the mound was only partly artificial composed of round stones, the base being a natural sandbank in which the unpaved cist 2' 5" by 1' 6" wide, was found. It was full of sand the there was no burial or grave goods.

The stone alignment consists of six conglomerate boulders, 7ft high and 27ft apart, except where one is missing, which Young speculates may have been double.

No description is given of the 'ditch and vallum' but the plan suggests that the 'vallum' may have been secondary.

Scot Antiq 1902; H W Young 1904.

A mutilated and overgrown cairn, c 13.0m diameter and c 2.0m high, with three kerb stones on the SE side. It stands eccentrically on a sub-circular platform measuring c 21.0m NNW to SSE, by c 18.0m tranversely and c 0.3m in height but is destroyed in the E by quarrying. At only one point is there any suggestion of the 'vallum' noted by Young, where there are traces of a bank for about 3.0m on the rim of the platform, but there is no trace of a ditch. This is almost certainly a Wessex-type bell-cairn.

Of the six stones (A-F) of the stone row only 'B' and 'C' remains upright, measuring respectively 1.3m and 1.0m in height. There is no evidence to support Young's theory of a double row.

Resurveyed at 1/2500 (by OS (RD) 26 November 1965)

Visited by OS (RL), 7 January 1971.

NH 93104 54717. A watching brief was undertaken between October 2003 and January 2004 on part of a house plot close to the site of a cairn and stone row (NH95SW 3). No archaeological deposits or features were revealed.

Report lodged with Highland SMR and the NMRS.

Sponsor: Mr D MacIntosh.

S Farrell 2004.