Mummer's Reive

NJ63SE 2 6572 3281

(NJ 6572 3281) Mummer's Reive (NR)

OS 6" map, Aberdeenshire, 2nd ed., (1901)

A very large cairn of stones resembling a burial cairn. The origin of the name is unknown but the Rev Masson thought it to have been used as the seat of a sham Bishop, called a Mummer, elected according to custom annually, who conducted a service of the church here. Reive is the name given to a fortification.

Name Book 1867.

A robbed cairn, 12.5m in diameter and 0.6m high with hollowed, stony centre, situated on a conspicuous wooded shoulder. Around it at a distance varying from 5.0m to 11.0m is a low oval bank, not traceable in the NE, but this may be the remains of a later plantation dyke.

Resurveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 20 February 1969.

This robbed cairn is situated on a conspicuous wooded shoulder in an area of grassland and heather scrub at an altitude of 180m OD. The low bank may be of post-medieval date.

NMRS, MS/712/63, visited May 1989.

This cairn is situated on a large, wooded knoll on a steep, S-facing slope 340m NNW of Hillbrae farmsteading (NJ63SE 53). The centre has been dug into, but the cairn measures about 13m in diameter and the rim of grass-grown boulders and stones that forms its perimeter still stands some 0.6m in height.

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS, IF), 21 February 1996.

Scheduled as 'Mummer's Reive, cairn... a prehistoric (Bronze-Age) burial cairn... situated on a conspicuous, wooded shoulder on the SW shoulder of Meikle Tom...'.

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 23 November 2006.