Muck, Beinn Airein

NM47NW 4 4032 7913

At NM 4032 7913, prominently situated on the summit of Beinn Airein, is a mutilated, turf-covered stony mound 6.5m in diameter and 0.5m high. Its situation and condition suggests it is a cairn.

Surveyed at 1:10,000.

Visited by OS (AA) 12 May 1972.

RCAHMS surveyed the mound, turf enclosure and triangulation pillar at Beinn Airein, Muck on 21 June 2002 with plane table and self-reducing alidade at a scale of 1:500. The plan was later used as the basis for an illustration published in 2016 at a scale of 1:1000 (Hunter, fig. 4.6).

A cylindrical Ordnance Survey triangulation pillar is situated on the summit plateau of Beinn Airein, together with a turf mound, previously classified as a burial cairn, and an enclosure. The turf mound (Muck02 333) lies to the SE of the pillar and measures 5.7m in diameter and stands up to 0.7m in height; there is a turf-stripping halo around it. The purpose of the enclosure at the S end of the broad summit is not known. Bounded by the cliffs on the S and elsewhere by a bank up to 3m thick and 0.4m high, it encloses an area measuring about 60m from E to W by 35m internally. It too is built of turf, stripped in a broad band to either side of the bank. Below the enclosure, a short stretch of trackway zig zags down the steep rocky slope that forms the S flank of Beinn Airein.

(Muck02, 333)

Visited by RCAHMS (AGCH, SDB) 19 May 2002