Loch Borralan East

14. Chambered Cairn, Loch Borrolan. About ½ m. NW. of Aultnacealgach Hotel, on the slope of the hill about 100' above Loch Borrolan, is a cairn which has been very completely excavated. It has a diameter of 44'. 16' in from the outer edge is a chamber measuring about 10' long and 6' 3" broad across the centre, with its longest axis WNW. and ESE. It is polygonal in form, constructed of six large slabs having the interspaces filled with building, except between the two large stones at the ESE., where the space is filled up with round boulders and earth, and in the NNW. corner, where there is a recess. This recess is 4' 6" in length and 2' 6" in depth and is roofed with overlapping stones. Its outer edge is marked off by a double line of flat stones, partially superimposed, about 6" or 811 in breadth. There are no signs of paving behind it. The greatest height from the floor of the chamber to the top of the cairn is 6' 6". No sign of an entrance passage is visible, but the filling between the two slabs at the ESE. indicates its existence.

Several small fragments of unornamented pottery, parts of a single vessel with walls about ¼" in thickness, were recovered on excavation. They are coarse in quality, the clay being immixed with numerous small pieces of quartz and stone. The interior surface is blackened and smooth. They are preserved in the Museum at Dunrobin.

OS 6-inch map: Sutherland Sheet xci. (unnoted).

RCAHMS 1911, visited (AOC) 11th June 1909.

This chambered cairn is situated on a sloping hillside under heather moorland with good views to Cul Mhur to the north-west and over Loch Borralan to the south. The cairn is oval in plan, measuring 18m x 12m, aligned NW-SE, and standing up to 3m in height. There are suggestions of possible horns protruding from south and west edges. The main cairn fabric consists of gathered, rounded rubble averaging 0.35m across, although the major structural elements are built from angular stone up to 1.5m in length. Several of the larger stones around the SE edge are displaced. A 3-4m long passage is entered from the south-east leading into a chamber measuring approximately 3m x 2m x 1.5m. The collapse of the chamber roof suggests robbing.

(HLP_no 5)

Assynt's Hidden Lives Project 2009

NC 26243 11189 Loch Borralan East Chambered Cairn was excavated by volunteers led by AOC’s John Barber between 29 August–17 September 2011. The chamber had previously been cleared by Alexander Curle in 1909; Audrey Henshall (1963) categorises it as being in the Orkney-Cromarty group, and suggests that it may have had horns protruding on the SE and SW sides. This monument had been selected for investigation as it is a type site for the area and because we believed that its soft deposits had been removed by Curle, allowing us to concentrate on its architecture and engineering.

Our excavations revealed that the polygonal chamber had been built onto the top of a small crag and tail bedrock feature. The top of the crag had been quarried roughly level and the tail, to the W of the chamber had been quarried away to allow for a roughly symmetrical sweep of the cairn around this side of the monument. The extension westwards is what Ms Henshall, and this writer, had imagined might be evidence for a hornwork. Entrance was from the E with a passageway believed to extend somewhat to the SE.

No archaeological deposits were found within the chamber and it seems probable that these were removed by Curle's excavations. The chamber itself had been constructed from large quarried slabs of Syenite, a granite-like rock type (but with no quartz) and a pink to red appearance (from the Feldspar) when fresh. The surfaces of these large slabs had been dressed to rough planarity and flake scars can be seen on three in particular. Examination of the spoil tips revealed the presence of quartzite or a crypto crystalline quartz-like stone of great density and hardness. A simple on site experiment showed that this was easily capable of working the surface of Syenite blocks. Some of this material was found in pencil-shaped prismatic fragments, one end of which had been brought to a rough point and the tips of which were broken.

The entrance area was stripped of peat and small stones in and over the peat, the latter being attributed to Curle’s excavation work in 1909. Under these lay an entanglement of very large stones, weighing 300–500kg. These could not be removed by hand without damaging the monument, and were left in place. It was nonetheless clear that this monument has an antechamber, a possibility recognised by Henshall.

Excavations into the cairn material beyond the ante chamber revealed the slightly concave, frontal façade of this D-shaped cairn. A low extension beyond the main façade wall was divided by a narrow entrance passage, which terminates at two low but relatively massive entrance portals of Salterella gritstone. Between them the entrance to the antechamber is choked with densely packed stones in a soil matrix which is peat-free. It is clear that Neolithic deposits survive within the antechamber. It is possible, indeed probable that some of the very large slabs now choking the ante-chamber formed part of an ornate, polycope façade and the others are roofing slabs of the antechamber.

Two long cuttings were dug from the chamber out past the cairn edge on the S and W sides of the monument. These revealed the expected polycope walls, three full walls and a plinth wall on the outermost circuit. The innermost wall face is in fact the outer face of the core cairn within which the chamber was built; it is 1.6m wide at the revealed height, near the top of the chamber.

Archive: RCAHMS (intended)

Funder: Historic Scotland; Highland Leader+ and Heritage Lottery Fund

AOC Archaeology Group, 2011