Field Visit
Date November 1982
Event ID 921905
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/921905
Situated in a forestry plantation 300m SE of Auchnaha, there are the remains of what was originally a large and impressive chambered cairn (OSA 1795, 257; Henshall 1972, 327-8). Aligned NE and SW, it now measures 23m by 13.5m, with the main chamber entered at the centre of a deep crescentic forecourt at the NE end. Two slabs of a lateral chamber survive near the SW end of the cairn. Five stones of the facade remain upright, but those at each tip have fallen and others have been removed; the tallest stone, at the S end of the arc, is 1.5m high. Both portal stones have fallen from the line of the facade, but a second, inner portal, 1.4m high and slightly displaced, remains on the SE side.
The chamber, some 5m long by 1.5m broad internally, comprises four massive side-slabs, but nothing can be seen of the transverse slab that would originally have divided the chamber into two compartments, and there is now no trace of the further slabs, visible on the line of the chamber in 1962, that suggested that there may originally have been three compartments. A displaced capstone still spans the chamber at the entrance.
The surviving side-slab and end-slab of the lateral chamber project up to 0.4m above the cain material. Some 24m further to the SW an upright slab set on the axis of the cairn measures 0.85m by 0.4m at the base and 0.9m in height.
The S face of the E standing stone of the facade bears an incised Latin cross (150mm by 110m) at a point about 0.2m from the top (see RCAHMS 1992).
RCAHMS 1988, visited November 1982
