Archaeology Notes

Event ID 693987

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/693987

NR34NE 10 3907 4646.

(NR 3908 4646) (information from RCAHMS).

The remains of a Clyde group long cairn lie in rough grazing at nearly 100ft OD, not far from the ruins of Ballynaughton More. Little cairn material remains. All round the north west side of the now turf covered cairn no edge can be detected, but the area of the cairn is level so that on the lower south east side there is a drop of two or three feet to the natural slope of the hill. This drop presumably represents roughly the original edge of the cairn and suggests that it was trapezoidal, at least 50ft long on the main axis of the chamber, about 46ft across the north east end, and about 28ft across 50ft to the south west. Cairn material seems to stretch 7ft or so in front of the chamber entrance, in the north east.

There appear to have been two rather widely set portal stones, leading to a chamber of 4 compartments excavated by Bryce (1902), who notes

that the compartments were filled with stones and soil. In the third one, he found a hoard of 72 groats and 2 half groats, dating from the mid 15th to the mid 16th century. He inferred that the chamber was already ruined and roofless when the coins were hidden. Also found were a flint flake and a minute fragment of bone.

T H Bryce 1902; F Celoria 1959; A S Henshall 1972, visited 1962.

The remains of a chambered cairn as described above.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (BS) 20 June 1978.