Gillivoan

This short, horned long cairn is situated on a low rise in the moorland descending southwards towards Latheron below the A9 public road about 450m NNW of Gillivoan farmhouse. The heather-clad outline of the cairn is sharply defined all around its margin, rising steeply out of the moor, and while two quarry-pits have been sunk into the eastern half of its summit, the body of the mound appears substantially intact, rising a little way above the tops of the horns projecting on the cardinal points. Aligned roughly with the axis of the rise, the body of the cairn measures some 16.4m from NW to SE by 14.2m transversely, though low spreads of cairn material from 1.8m to 2.5m broad can also be seen in the re-entrants between the horns on the NE, SE and SW. The horns are in the order of 9m in length, giving the cairn overall dimensions of about 25m and 24m respectively. The N and E horns are the more slender, measuring about 4.5m broad, as compared with about 6m on the S and W. Despite the disturbance of the top of the cairn, there is no trace of a chamber, and the few larger stones visible are evidently not structural. Nevertheless, chambers in these cairns are typically aligned with the longer axis, but with so little difference in the length and breadth here, the difference noted in the breadth of the horns is possibly an indication that any chamber is aligned NE and SW, rather than with the general NW and SE axis suggested by the topography.

Visited by RCAHMS (SPH, GB) 22 February 2007