Bute, Dunagoil

This site was recorded as part of the RCAHMS Emergency Survey, undertaken by Angus Graham and Vere Gordon Childe during World War 2. The project archive has been catalogued during 2013-2014 and the material, which includes notebooks, manuscripts, typescripts, plans and photographs, is now available online.

Information from RCAHMS (GF Geddes) 2 December 2014.

There are at least two cists and several mounds in the valley between Dunagoil (NS 084 531) and Little Dunagoil (NS 087 532). Two of the mounds were opened (in the 19th century) by Blain, who found bones.

(See NS05SE 7, 15).

Information from OS (IF) 31 August 1972

There is no trace of either cists or burial mounds in the area described by the previous authority. There is however a burial chamber (NS05SE7) at NS 087 532 and a group of field clearance cairns (NS05SE 15) at NS 087 531 and it is quite possible that Marshall's reference was to these features.

Visited by OS (B S) 22 November 1976.

NS05SE 13 08513 53159

This cairn is situated on a terrace immediately NE of Dunagoil fort (NS05SE 4), amidst extensive rig-and-furrow (NS05SE 29). It comprises a grass-grown mound of stones measuring 5m in diameter by 0.5m in height over a discontinuous kerb of edge-set stones. Two other cairns of similar size lie about 50m to the N (NS 08509 53200 & NS 08518 53202).

The cairns are noted as antiquities on a plan of Dunagoil produced in 1780, probably by Peter or Alexander May (Anon 1780), and they are likely to be the same cairns referred to by both Blain in his History of Bute (Ross 1880, 78) and Marshall, who’s plan shows five mounds and a cist (1915, 44). Three mounds and a cist are depicted on the 3rd edition of the OS 6-inch map revised in 1915 (Buteshire 1924, Sheet CCXXVII). The cist, which was probably set within the eastern of the two other cairns noted above, is no longer visible.

Visited by RCAHMS (GFG, AGCH, GB) 30 March 2009.