Tag: cairns

Balnabroich, Kirkmichael, Perthshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NO 1008 5695

Getting Here

Balnabroich cairn

From Kirkmichael village take the A94 road 2 miles south to the Balnabroich standing stone and another 100 yards past it, on the left (east) take the dirt-track uphill, following the directions to reach the Balnabroich hut circles. You’ll see the large prehistoric rock pile of the Grey Cairn on the near skyline just above the huts and roughly on the same level, 50 yards away to the south, you’ll see this scruffy lumpy dump of a cairn, all overgrown.

Archaeology & History

The cairn, looking S

Amidst the veritable scatter of a thousand clearance cairns (yes, that’s the estimate), there are a few up here that had more funerary functions than the rest.  This being one of them.  When Allan Stewart (1795) wrote about them all in the Statistical Account, he couldn’t have missed this one—and yet he made no mention of it.  We had to wait another seventy years before the outside world became aware of its existence.  Then, along with “a band of between twenty and thirty workmen,” John Stuart (1865) set out to see what lay beneath the rocky pile.  In truth, much more attention was given to the huge Gray Cairn close by (understandably so), but at least some attention was given here.  Stuart described this cairn as,

“about 9 yards across, defined by large boulders, with a raised ridge around, and a cup in the centre. The raised ridges and centre were all formed of small stones and earth. A trench was cut through it from the southeast, which showed that in the centre, at a depth of 2 feet, a deposit had been made, of which the remains were charred wood and fragments of charred bone, with traces of blackish matter, which had filtered into the yellow subsoil, as in the case of the graves at Hartlaw.’ Many fragments of white quartz pebbles appeared near the centre, as in other cairns to the east.”

Indeed, at least one of the “cairns to the east” is made entirely of quartz stones!  Since Mr Stuart’s dig into the tomb, it has widened out slightly as rummaging cattle and other damage has been inflicted, and the grasses have coloured the tomb with their life.  Check it out when you’re up here!

References:

  1. MacLagan, Christian, The Hill Forts, Stone Circles and other Structural Remains of Ancient Scotland, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1875.
  2. Ramsay, John S., Highways and Byways of Strathmore and the Northern Glens, Blairgowrie Advertiser 1927.
  3. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, North-East Perth: An Archaeological Landscape, HMSO: Edinburgh 1990.
  4. Stewart, Allan, “Parish of Kirkmichael,” in Statistical Account of Scotland – volume 15, 1795.
  5. Stuart, John, “Account of Excavations in Groups of Cairns, Stone Circles and Hut Circles on Balnabroch, Parish of Kirkmichael, Perthshire,” in Proceedings Society Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 6, 1865.

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Black Park (3), Callander, Perthshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 66885 07447

Getting Here

Low-lying Black Park (3)

From Callander head east along the main A84 road and nearly 300 yards past the entrance to the Keltie Bridge caravan park, take the tiny road on your left (north) and barely 100 yards along turn right and go up here for exactly 1 mile.  Walk up the track from here and follow the directions to find the Black Park (1) cairn; and then the nearby small Black Park (2) cairn.  From here you need to walk north-east round the small rounded hillock in front of you, and cross a small burn (stream) up to the next small grassy rise.  Altogether this is about 200 yards from the Black Park (2) cairn.  On this grassy rise lives the Black Park (3) cairn!

Archaeology & History

As with its compatriot Black Park (2) cairn 200 yards southwest, this can be hard to see.  It’s an overgrown small singular cairn (it looks like a tumulus now) of no great note to look at: probably the resting spot of an individual or just a small family.  Measuring some 5-6 yards across and less than a yard high at the most, its easily missed unless you’re really mean to find it. More impressive are the ones on the hill immediately above you to the east.  Head there next!

References:

  1. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Braes of Doune: An Archaeological Survey, RCAHMS: Edinburgh 1994.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Grey Cairn carving, Kirkmichael, Perthshire

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Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NO 10058 57013

Archaeology & History

When the Grey Cairn above Balnabroich, Kirkmichael, was explored in the second-half of the 19th century by John Stuart (1865) and a number of local labourers, they found the floor of the tomb had been paved with a number of large boulders.  Near its centre, along with finding remains of charred wood, they moved some of the rocks and,

“On turning over the stones a circular disc of stone with a hole in the centre was found, and also a small boulder with a cup on its flat face.”

Grey Cairn at sunfall

He made no further remarks about the carving and no intimation that it was removed, so we must presume it is still there, at the botton of the cairn.  Any visitors to the site might want to have a look at the massive scatter of surface stones that make up the cairn to see if any further cup-marks exist on them.  It’s not uncommon to find them on such giant tombs.

Folklore

A very curious folktale was known of the cairn in the 19th century, whose theme is recognized at numerous other prehistoric sites, but the mythic creature involved here is very much different from the ones we’re used to.  Mr Stuart told that,

“The popular belief is that a mermaid is buried beneath it. This mermaid used to throw stones at people who were coming from church at Kirkmichael, and she could only be seen through a hole in the knot of the pine tree.  At last she was chased to the hill at Balnabroch on her flight to the waters of Loch Marech, on the other side of the hill, and there killed, when the Grey Cairn was raised over her.”

References:

  1. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, North-East Perth: An Archaeological Landscape, HMSO: Edinburgh 1990.
  2. Stuart, John, “Account of Excavations in Groups of Cairns, Stone Circles and Hut Circles on Balnabroch, Parish of Kirkmichael, Perthshire,” in Proceedings Society Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 6, 1865.

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Black Park (2), Callander, Perthshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 6672 0735

Getting Here

Black Park (2) cairn

Take the same directions as if you’re going to visit the large Black Park (1) cairn, and from here look down the slight boggy slope to your right (east) and, across the other side of a small burn (stream) you’ll see a slightly raised grassy knoll.  A curved dyke is to its left (west) side.  You’re there!

Archaeology & History

This small cairn, barely two feet high at the most, and five yards across, is deemed as a possible Bronze Age cairn on Canmore and in the Royal Commission (1994) report of the area.  There is certainly a pile of small stones here, but it may be a clearance cairn (I hope I’m wrong).  Only an excavation will tell us for sure.

References:

  1. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Braes of Doune: An Archaeological Survey, RCAHMS: Edinburgh 1994.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Black Park (1), Callander, Perthshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 66612 07349

Also Known as:

  1. Black Wood
  2. Sruth Geal

Getting Here

Black Park (1) cairn, looking south

Less than a mile east of Callander on the main A84 road, nearly 300 yards past the entrance to the Keltie Bridge caravan park, take the tiny road on your left (north) and barely 100 yards along turn right and go up here for excatly 1 mile (give or take a few yeards) where  track goes into the forest on your left and you can park-up here.  Walk up the track into the silence for just under a mile where, as the track splits and you kink to the right, a gate appears.  On the other side of the gate, turn immediately left, almost walking back on yourself, just above the curving waters of a burn, through boggy reeds, keeping to the fence-line until, less than 300 yards along, you’ll reach what you’re looking for.

Archaeology & History

Black Park (1), looking W

This reasonably large cairn and its neighbours (Black Park [2], [3], [4] and [5]) would appear to be relatively new discoveries as I can find nothing about it prior to the Royal Commission’s 1994 survey.  They are even absent from Moray MacKay’s (1953) excellent work on the area!  Hence, descriptions of it are scant and visitors to the place are few indeed (we did meet a local who knew about the old tomb, but said that nothing was known about it); but it is, nonetheless, a fine, albeit denuded and very overgrown cairn, living today amidst a quiet mass of reeds and surrounded by boggy ground—so make sure you’ve got your boots on!

Internal line of stonework
Black Park (1), looking SE

At its height, today, it stands less than four feet tall and measures roughly 16 yards across at its widest.  Through one section of the tomb there runs a raised line of stonework that almost looks like internal walling, which may have been where a chamber once existed.  It’s been hollowed out by someone in the not-too-distant past but, as I said, there are no records of such a thing, so whether or not that was a chamber or merely a fortuituous collapse of stone in a straight line, we can’t really say.  Along its more northern edges there seems to be a small raised wall of stone defining its edge, although once again it requires a more discerning examination to work out whether this is part of its original facade, or is a result of some of the stone mass falling to the edges.

Visit the old place and sit with its silence for a while…

References:

  1. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments, Scotland, Braes of Doune: An Archaeological Survey, RCAHMS: Edinburgh 1994.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Wilson Scar, Shap, Cumbria

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Stone Circle (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NY 549 182

Archaeology & History

This site has been completely destroyed by the huge eyesore of a quarry that we all see when we’re travelling up the M6 north, above Shap.  John Waterhouse (1985) told that “a rescue excavation” was carried out here with help from the kids at Penrith Queen Elizabeth School, shortly before its destruction in 1952, but now there is no trace left of it.  When it was first described by J.E. Spence (1935), the circle had already been damaged by a wall that cut right through its centre.  He told:

Spence’s 1935 plan

“The circle, which is 6o feet in diameter, is composed of 35 stones, 20 being on the west and 15 on the east side of the boundary wall running through the circle from north to south.  The stones of which the circle is composed are Borrowdale erratics, a large number of which are scattered over the adjoining ground on both sides of the wall but more thickly in Sweet Holme Pasture. The  stones, which vary up to 5 feet 9 inches by 3 feet, are larger and more numerous in the north-west quadrant where the tallest stands 1 foot 8 inches above the level of the turf.  The ground within the circle is level, but to the south and west it slopes gently down from the edge of the circle in such a manner as to suggest that the area within the circle has been levelled.”

1952 plan laid over Spence’s 1935 plan

Spence told that an ancient “sunken trackway” led outwards from the circle to the south-west in the direction of Rosgill, but when the 1952 excavation occurred, no remains of such a track were found; nor was the wall that had cut through it; and the north-easterly section of the circle had been cut into and re-laid, presumably by the quarrymen.  It was quite plain, wrote G.G. Sieveking (1984), “that this portion of the monument was encroached upon in the summer of 1952, and hastily reconstructed for the benefit of the archaeologists.”

Their excavation found that some internal sections of this ring had been paved with thin limestone slabs and they also uncovered two small cairns, neither of which possessed anything.  However, they did find four funerary deposits within the monument: one at the northeastern section of the circle (no.1); another near the centre (no.4); and remains of a cremation west of centre (no.3); but the most complete find was at the western side of the ring, where a “disarticulated inhumation burial was lying immediately beneath the turf line in a shallow grave 1.35 m long, surrounded by a setting of small boulders.”  It was a near complete human skeleton.  This place was obviously, at times, used in ceremonies for the dead.

Shortly after the archaeological examination of the site, it was blasted away by quarrying.  Gone!

References:

  1. Barnatt, John, Stone Circles of Britain – volume 2, BAR: Oxford 1989.
  2. Burl, Aubrey, The Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale University Press 2000.
  3. Farrah, Robert W.E., A Guide to the Stone Circles of Cumbria, Hayloft: Kirkby Stephen 2008.
  4. Seton, Ray, The Reason for the Stone Circles in Cumbria, privately published: Morecambe 1995
  5. Sieveking, G.G., “Excavation of a Stone Circle at Wilson Scar, Shap North 1952,” in Transactions Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, volume 84, 1984.
  6. Spence, J.E., “A Stone Circle in Shap Rural Parish,” in Transactions Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, volume 35, 1935.
  7. Waterhouse, John, The Stone Circles of Cumbria, Phillimore: Chichester 1985.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Gowlane East (3), Dingle, County Kerry

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Cup-and-Ring Stone (lost):  OS Grid Reference – Q 53 03?

Archaeology & History

Gowlane East (3) stone (Graves 1877)

First discovered by Richard Hitchcock in 1848, this petroglyph (along with the Gowlane East (2) carving) was one of two missing stones in the area that James Graves (1877) thought were seemingly “fragments of a large monument,” although he said nothing more about it and, sadly, Mr Hitchcock’s sketch here is all that we have left to guide us.  The carving may have come from one of the nearby raths, souterrains, or have been part of a circle or cairn.  The stone looks to have been reasonably small in size and, hopefully, is residing in a wall somewhere or is just buried in a field.

There are several Gowlane place-names in the area, but Judith Cuppage (1986) told that the great 19th century artist and antiquarian George du Noyer “identified the townland as Gowlane East”, although the closest “neighbouring townland” would be Gowlin (Gualainn).  If any local folk know where this might be hiding, please let us know. (the grid reference cited here is a very vague guess!)

References:

  1. Cuppage, Judith, Archaeological Survey of the Dingle Peninsula, Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne: Ballyferriter 1986.
  2. Graves, James, “On Cup and Circle Sculptures as Occurring in Ireland,” in Journal Royal Society Antiquaries, Ireland, volume 4 (4th series), April 1877.

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Gowlane East (2), Dingle, County Kerry

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Cup-and-Ring Stone (lost):  OS Grid Reference – Q 53 03?

Archaeology & History

Gowlane (2) carving (in Graves 1877)

When James Graves (1877) described the gorgeous Aghacarrible petroglyph, he told that “in the neighbouring townland of Gowlane” were three other carvings—with this fine multi-ringed design being one of them.  It was first discovered and drawn by Richard Hitchcock in 1848 and was thought by Graves to have been broken from “a larger monument.” (like the Gowlane East [3] carving)  Whether it was from a cairn, a souterrain or a stone circle, we can but guess.  And we must also guess as to where it might be now, for no account of it has appeared since Mr Graves’ description.  With any luck it will be in a wall somewhere, or simply buried in a field.

There are several Gowlane place-names in the area, but Judith Cuppage (1986) told that the great 19th century artist and antiquarian George du Noyer “identified the townland as Gowlane East”, although the closest “neighbouring townland” would be Gowlin (Gualainn).  If any local folk know where this might be hiding, please let us know. (the grid reference cited here is a very vague guess!)

References:

  1. Cuppage, Judith, Archaeological Survey of the Dingle Peninsula, Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne: Ballyferriter 1986.
  2. Graves, James, “On Cup and Circle Sculptures as Occurring in Ireland,” in Journal Royal Society Antiquaries, Ireland, volume 4 (4th series), April 1877.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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One Barrow, St. Austell, Cornwall

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Tumulus (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SX 0309 5227

Archaeology & History

More than two hundred years ago, an impressive prehistoric burial mound lived in an area that used to be known as Gwallon Down, not far from the impressive Long Stone monolith, about half-a-mile west of Charlestown on the southern edges of St. Austell, but it was completely destroyed in 1801.  Thankfully there was a lengthy account made of the site in John Whitaker’s (1804) huge work, but there seems to be little else known of it.  He told us:

“In the middle of that extended waste, the downs of St. Austle, was, what was called One Barrow.  This waste, in 1801, was resolved to be enclosed, and the barrow was obliged to be levelled.  In this operation, the single workman came near the centre, and there found a variety of stones, all slates, ranged erect in an enclosure nearly square.  The stones were about one foot-and-a-half in height, apparently fixed in the ground before the formation of the barrow.  The stones were all undressed, but had little stones carefully placed in the crevices at the joints of the large, in order to preclude all communication between the rubbish without and the contents within.  On the even heads of these stones was laid a square freestone, which had evidently been hewn into this form, which seemed to rest with its extremities on the edges of the others, and was about eighteen or twenty inches in diameter.  The summit of the barrow rose about eight or ten feet above all.  In the enclosure, the leveller found a dust, remarkably fine, and seemingly inclining to clay.  On the surface it was brown, about the middle downwards it took a dark chestnut colour, and at the bottom it approached towards a black.  On stirring it up, a multitude of bones appeared, different in the sizes, but none exceeding six or seven inches in length.  Among them were some pieces about the largeness of a half-crown, which, from their concave form, convinced him they were parts of a skull.  The whole mass of bones and ashes might (he thought) be about one gallon in quantity.  On touching the bones, they instantly crumbled into dust, and took the same colour with the same fineness as the dust in which they were found.  They were exceedingly white when they were first discovered, but remarkably brittle; the effect assuredly of their calcination in a fire, antecedent to their burial.  Much in fineness and in colour with these ashes, appeared several veins of irregular earth on the outside of the enclosure; which, from their position without, yet adjoining, and from the space occupied by them there, he conjectured to have been bodies laid promiscuously upon the funeral pile, but which I conjecture to have been only the ashes adhering to the ground, and not possible to be separated from it, for a burial with the rest within the enclosure.  They had nothing of sand in them, but seemed inclining to clay, and even more so (from the adhering soil probably) than the dust of the enclosure.  And, as the workman was fully convinced of what every one else must acknowledge, that the ashes and the bones of the enclosure had once belonged to a human body, he very properly took up the whole with care, placed the stones nearly in their original posture within an hedge contiguous, then in building, placed also the bones with the ashes within their original enclosure there, and even placed the covering-stone over both.”

One wonders where precisely the hedgerow happened to be where the stones were placed “nearly in their original posture”, and if this reconstruction was ever recovered.

The site was subsequently mentioned in Polwhele’s (1816) massive survey, reiterating Whitaker’s description, simply telling how:

“With respect to the monumental remains in the neighbourhood of St Austel, a very ingenious correspondent says in one of the mounds of earth on our downs which was lately levelled a kind of urn was discovered which evidently contained human ashes many of the bones were entire but appear to have been calcined I am well acquainted with the man who dug this up.”

References:

  1. Borlase, William Copeland, Nænia Cornubiæ, Longmans Green Reader: Truro 1872.
  2. Hammond, Joseph, A Cornish Parish: Being an Account of St. Austell, Skeffington & Sons: London 1897.
  3. Polwhele, Richard, The History of Cornwall – volume 2, Law & Whittaker: Truro 1816.
  4. Whitaker, John, The Ancient Cathedral of Cornwall – volume 2, John Stockdale: London 1804.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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Ossian’s Cairn, Fowlis Wester, Perthshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NN 88987 30186

Also Known as:

  1. Jock’s Cairn

Getting Here

Cairn on the distant peak

Make a day out for this one!  You could, of course, go barely half-a-mile straight up the hill (southwest) from Ossian’s Stone in the Sma’ Glen below – but it’s steep as fuck and I know that most of you wouldn’t do it.  So, park-up and take the gradual 3 mile walk into the mountains.  Coming via Crieff, along the A85 road east, turn left up the A822 Dunkeld road at Gilmerton.  2½ miles on, you reach the Foulford golf course on the right-hand side of the road, whilst directly across the road a dirt-track leads you into the fields, past the large Foulford cup-and-ring stone.  Keep along this track, bearing right just before Connochan Lodge and follow this dirt-track uphill on and on for another 2 miles where you’ll eventually see the cairn-peak in the distance. Another shallow track leads uphill after about 2 miles: we walked up to where the ground levels out, walked across the dodgy swamp-land and up again to the tomb. It’s well worth it!

Archaeology & History

Visible for many miles round here from the surrounding hills, this somewhat mutilated giant cairn, highlighted on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1867, hasn’t fared well in archaeology tomes.  Apart from a passing note in Margaret Stewart’s (1966) summary article on prehistoric remains in central Perthshire—where she erroneously told it to be 400 feet lower down that it actually is—almost nothing has been said of this place.  Most odd.

Cairn spoil, looking SE
New cairn atop of the old

Despite it being ransacked over the centuries, it was obviously of some considerable size in its early days.  Today, surmounting it, is a very large walker’s cairn which, no doubt, has accrued some of its own foundations from the prehistoric tomb on which it sits.  To the side of this recent cairn, another one is growing, thanks to stones brought from near and not-too-far.  But the original creation can still be seen in outline and mass all around.  Indeed, as you walk all round the modern cairn, you’re walking over much of the early collapsed stonework sleeping gently beneath the moorland vegetation, and once you walk away and below the cairn mass itself, looking back up at it you’ll notice the very ancient raised plinth of stone on which our modern one now lives.

Low walling on NW side

Its amorphous shape is somewhat amoeboid, measuring more than 22 yards across east-west, by 15 yards north-south, with a curious arc of low walling, very old indeed, on its northwestern side.  Whether this walling outlines the original edge of the tomb, only an excavation will tell.  The most notable remaining mass of ancient cairn material reaches out on its south-east to eastern edges, where some of it is beginning to fall away down the edge of the mountain slope.

Folklore

Local tradition assigns this cairn to be where the bones of the great hero-figure Ossian was removed to, when they were disturbed by the unruly mob of General Wade and his cohorts in the middle of the 18th century. Notes of the event were written at the time by one of Wade’s mob, a Captain Edward Burt, who told,

“the Highlanders, they assembled from distant parts, and having formed themselves into a body, they carefully gathered up the relics, and marched with them, in solemn procession, to a new place of burial, and there discharged their fire-arms over the grave, as supposing the deceased had been a military officer.”

This was essential, said Burt, as

Site shown on 1867 map
New cairn on old, looking W

“they (the Highlanders) firmly believe that if a dead body should be known to lie above ground, or be disinterred by malice, or the accidents of torrents of water, &c. and care was not immediately taken to perform to it the proper rites, then there would arise such storms and tempests as would destroy their corn, blow away their huts, and all sorts of other mis-fortunes would follow till that duty was performed.  You may here recollect what I told you so long ago, of the great regard the Highlanders have for the remains of their dead…”

Oral tradition tells us that this cairn, high above Ossian’s Stone, is where the rites occurred.  It makes sense too.

References:

  1. Finlayson, Andrew, The Stones of Strathearn, One Tree Island: Comrie 2010.
  2. Stewart, M.E.C., “Strathtay in the Second Millenium BC“, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 92, 1961.

Acknowledgements:  Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland. 

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

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