Cairn Hanach

ND34SW 30 31002 40840.

(ND 3100 4084) Cairn Hanach (NAT)

Chambered Cairn (NR)

OS 1:10,000 map, (1976)

Kenny's Cairn or Cairn Hanach, an Orkney-Cromarty type chambered round cairn, was excavated by Anderson and Shearer in 1866. It is about 40ft in diameter and is now an untidy mass of flat slabs, partly turf-covered. Finds included several hundred sherds of pottery, some of which were Iron Age, flints, a bone 'chisel' and a probable Iron Age pebble rubber. A small selection of the material is in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS); the rest have been lost.

A S Henshall 1963.

Cairn Hanach, as described and planned by Miss Henshall.

Resurveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (N K B) 27 April 1967.

This Orkney-Cromarty type chambered round cairn is situated on the leading (E) edge of a broad ridge that descends from Warehouse Hill to the N. The E flank of the ridge falls steeply in a series of rocky shelves while on the W the peaty moorland gradually drops away into the valley of the Warehouse Burn. The cairn measures about 17m in diameter by 2.5m in height on the NE and is composed of a bare and grass-grown mound of rubble which stands out from the surrounding heather landscape. The burial chamber, ante-chamber and entrance passage are all still visible, but little can be added to the description by Davidson and Henshall (1991, 119-121), except to mention a modern cairn that has been erected on top of the earlier mound. Of dry-stone construction, it stands immediately NE of the exposed burial chamber and measures about 1.4m in diameter at the base and rises to a height of 2m.

(YARROWS04 035)

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS) 10 May 2004