Nether Glenny, Port of Menteith, Perthshire

Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 56470 01923

Also Known as:

1. Canmore ID 24058

Getting Here

Along the A81 road from Port of Menteith to Aberfoyle, watch out for the small road in the trees running at an angle sharply uphill, nearly opposite Portend, up to Coldon and higher. Keep going, bearing right at Mondowie, then stopping at the dirt-track 100 yards or so further up. Walk up the track, thru the gate, and another 100 yards or so higher up, go thru the gate on your left. Walk up the field alongside the fence until you’re on the level and you’ll see a large rounded mound about 75 yards in the same field to your left.

Archaeology & History

This little known prehistoric tomb sits within a landscape rich in very impressive neolithic and Bronze Age petroglyphs and probably had some relationship with one or more of the carvings in aeons past.  It is one of several tombs in the area.

The site was only recently rediscovered in the 1980s, following an archaeological survey of the area before the forestry plantation was done.  Measuring about 20 yards across and about five feet high, the large mound consists of the traditional mass of hundreds, if not thousands of stones.  It seems that a ring of small uprights encircled and defined the edge of the cairn, although this element is only visible on its eastern side.  Its northern mass and edges have been dug into and ruined at some point in the past, leaving a mass of rubble visible beneath the encroaching grasses.  The tomb has not be adequately excavated, so we do not know whether it was built at the same time of the surrounding petroglyphs.  It must be noted (again) that the incidence of tombs and cup-and-ring stones is not infrequent.

The grassland plain where we stand here—with another tomb of very similar form about 100 yards to the north—reminded me somewhat of the Baildon Moor complex in Yorkshire, where rock art and burials are found side by side.

References:

1. Bailey, G.B., ‘Nether Glenny (Port of Menteith parish)’, in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, 1987.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian