Eday, Withebeir

HY53NE 12 5675 3537.

(HY 5675 3537) Brough (NR).

OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed., (1900).

A fine chambered cairn composed of stones of considerable size, but overgrown with heather. It is approximately circular with a diameter of 60' to 65', though the east side appears to be rather flattened suggesting that there may be some form of horns or fore-court at this side at present obscured by overgrowth. The top has been reduced and broken into, but the mound is still about 5'3" high. Robbing has also taken place on the SW side where there is exposed a large slab, 6' long, probably a displaced lintel. The chamber within the cairn may still be almost complete.

The site is almost certainly that opened by Farrer in 1855, who states the mound above London Bay is sepulchral; small portions of deer bones, bone in a rotten state, and a human tooth, were found in it. It was in three compartments, and there was a passage apparently leading to a fourth which we had not time to explore.(J Farrer 1859).

RCAHMS 1946; A S Henshall 1963.

A chambered cairn apparently wedge-shaped and measuring 15.0m N-S by 13.0m E-W at its widest point towards the N. Otherwise as described by Henshall.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 26 July 1970.

This mound stands dominantly on the hilltop; it is about 1.6m high and 19m across, and from Farrer's exploration of 1857 it is known to contain at least four compartments. Henshall suggested that the E side, which is rather flattened on plan, had been a horned forecourt; this is quite definite, the horns having apparently been curtailed by stone-quarrying in connection with the building of the hill dyke immediately to the E.

RCAHMS 1984, visited October 1981.