Cist: SO Grid Reference – NJ 0194 5540
Also Known as:
Archaeology & History
This is another of the many sites in the country that was uncovered fortuitously, as a result of widening the road just west of the Loch of Blairs. It’s in relative isolation from other prehistoric sites. The best description of it was by local antiquarian and folklorist James Ritchie (1932), to whom we owe our gratitude for the old photo. “This cist,” he wrote,
“as such tombs are called, had been discovered by workmen who were digging sand from a mound just by the main road to Grantown. Flat, rectangular stones formed its ends and sides; its top was a single slab of massive proportions. All around were packed smooth. water-worn boulders, that had once lain in the bed of the Findhorn. The opening of the cist revealed the ashes of some long-departed dweller in Moray, together with pieces of what had been beautifully moulded pot of clay. On examination of the remains by antiquarian experts, the date of the burial was estimated to be at least a thousand years BC.”
The attached photo makes the site look larger than it is; as the length of the chamber is just 2ft 7in long, by 1ft 8in across, with the covering stone being nearly twice as large as the cist itself. The urn found inside the cist now resides in the Scottish National Museum of Antiquities.
References:
- Ritchie, James B., The Pageant of Morayland, Elgin Courant 1932.
© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian