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 SENew 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 mapNew 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:
Finlayson, Andrew, The Stones of Strathearn, One Tree Island: Comrie 2010.
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.
All remains of this prehistoric burial site have obviously long since fallen into only the vaguest of memory, but its incidence deserves reviving for those who may live nearby and seek for a place where our truly ancient ancestors once faired. Here, beneath the modern buildings of homo-profanus, less than a mile north-east of Newcastle city centre, a small prehistoric burial chamber, or cist, was uncovered quite accidentally by a Mr Russell Blackbird (1832) in the first-half of the 19th century. In a letter to the newly-formed (as it was back then) Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle in April of that year he told,
“In trenching some ground for planting, this morning, we discovered a stone vault, 4 feet long by 2 feet wide, and 20 inches deep, deposited in a dry hard marl below the soil, which we were taking out for making the walks in the garden. It contained the bones of a man, the head, in particular, quite perfect, with all the teeth in it. Also a small urn (was found)… There was some red-coloured earth in the urn which the labourers threw out.”
Mr Blackbird sent the antiquarian society a sketch of the urn that he and his colleagues discovered, reproduced here.
References:
Blackbird, Russell, “Account of the Discovery of a Stone Vault and Urn, at Villa Real, Jesmond,” in Archaeologia Aeliana, volume 2, 1832.
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.
You need to hit the village of Fowlis Wester, which is easiest to approach from both east and west along the A85, between Crieff and Perth: nearly 3 miles east of Gilmerton and about 6½ mile west of Methven. Keep your eyes peeled and take the road up (north) where the large rounded tree-covered tumulus stands and up to the village. Go through the village and uphill for literally ½ a mile (veering sharp left at a junction) where a gate on your right leads into the fields. (a large parking spot is 300 yards further uphill) Walk ¼-mile east and through the other side of the small woodland, over the fence, you’ll see the mound of a typical tumulus. That’s it!
Archaeology & History
If you’re going to visit the megalithic remains of Fowlis Wester ¾-miles to the west, the antiquarians amongst you might as well give this old burial mound your attention too. It’s not grandiose by any means, but its position in the landscape is quite superb. It’s built upon a long geological promontory with extensive views that reach from south-east to south to south-west for many miles into the distance with the Ochils framing the majority of the southern horizon, but also with the notable pap of the West Lomond hill 20 miles to the south-east mimicking the shape of the tomb itself. It was obviously built here with the extended landscape having some ancestral importance. Visit it and see for yourself!
Despite being a notable mound, this tumulus-cum-cairn only seems to have been written about for the first time as recently as 1998, when archaeologist Ian Armit visited the site. Roughly circular in form, it’s about 12 yards across and more than six feet in height. A small pile of stones crowns the very top, placed here in much more recent times. At ground level on its northern side, an arc of low lying stones define the edge of the tomb. The stones probably continue all the way round the entire structure, but it’s overgrown by centuries of soil and vegetation and we lose sight of it as we walk round. When Mr Armit (1998) wrote about the site, he and colleague wrote:
Seat Knowe, looking NWSeat Knowe, looking north
“A grassed-over stony cairn lies on the highest point of Seat Knowe, a ridge commanding extensive views to the south. The cairn has a diameter of c.10m and is up to 2m high. A modern cairn occupies it summit. The low turf foundations of a rectilinear structure, some 6 x 8m, occupy its south flank, and thee are extensive cultivation and field system remains in the vicinity.”
Check it out! You won’t be disappointed.
Folklore
An interesting piece of relatively recent folklore about Seat Knowe, described in the Perthshire Name Book around 1862, told that,
“One of the Earls of Strathearn, desirous of having a church in the vicinity of his Castle, stood on an eminence, on which he had a summer seat, and resolved to erect it where the sun first shone, which was on the spot where it now stands.”
References:
Armit, Ian & Hall, M., “Seat Knowe (Fowlis Wester parish): Cairn,” in Discovery & Excavation Scotland, 1998.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 6803 8695
Also Known as:
Robin Hood’s Howl
Archaeology & History
Site on the 1856 OS-map
There once stood a very impressive prehistoric burial mound here, a few hundred yards east of the roadside, just above the wooded valley known curiously as Robin Hood’s Howl. Highlighted on the 1856 Ordnance Survey map as an elongated structure, it was suggested in McDonnell’s (1963) work to have been a long barrow, measuring roughly 70 feet long by 50 feet across and more than six feet in height. It was seemingly written about for the first time by William Eastmead (1824) in his lengthy history of the area and was, he told,
“a tumulus of considerable dimensions (that) was lately opened at a place called the Hag, about a mile northwest of Kirkby-Moorside, in which was found an urn… Great numbers of human bones were also dug out…; and from the immense size of it, a great number of bodies appear to have been burnt indiscriminately, and the ashes of some particular person deposited in the urn.”
The urn would seem to have been either lost or destroyed—as has the tumulus. It was apparently still intact, albeit very denuded, twenty years ago, but has since been ploughed out.
References:
Eastmead, William, Historia Rievallensis: containing the history of Kirkby Moorside, R. Peat: Thirsk 1824.
McDonnell, J. (ed.), History of Helmsley, Rievaulx and District, Stonegate: York 1963.
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.
A couple of miles east of Crieff, take the A822 road from the Gilmerton junction and head up towards the Sma’ Glen. After literally 1¾ miles (2.8km), on the right-side of the road, you can park-up right opposite the dirt-track that leads up to Connachan Farm a half-mile away. Walking up and then past the farm, go past the Connachan (2) petroglyph, keeping on the same track uphill and just past the (Connachan 4) carving the land levels out where the track curves. From here, walk to your right, into the grasses, and about 90 yards along you’ll see a small rise in the ground with two or three fallen stones in the middle.
Archaeology & History
The cairn, looking N
There’s nothing truly notable about this much-overgrown cairn and you could very easily walk past it without noticing it was even there! Much of its original mass has been removed and, no doubt, its stones reused in the old walling a few yards to the north (a long section of that walling appears to have a prehistoric provenance). It measures roughly 10 yards across and its outer edges are clearly visible as a raised grass-covered mound all round, just one or two feet high at the most. Obviously it was much larger when first built, but all that we see now are its final ruins, four or five thousand years after its birth… The one thing of great note here is the view: you’re looking from east to south to west across an awesome landscape for many many miles. Check it out!
References:
Stewart, Margaret E.C., “Connachan, Crieff – Cup Marks and Hut Circle,” in Discovery & Excavation, Scotland, 1967.
Tumulus (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NZ 6692 2154
Archaeology & History
Location on 1930 OS-map
This long lost burial mound was first located by the local antiquarian William Hornsby in the early 20th century. It had been constructed close to the summit of the prominent rise of Cat Nab, immediately east above Saltburn. Its position was shown on the 1930 OS-map of the area. Destroyed by quarrying, it was thankfully excavated by Hornsby in 1913; and although his finds were never published, he left notes which told us that,
“there were two cremations and the sherds of at least three vessels: a collared urn, a pygmy cup and a vessel with an everted rim.” (Crawford 1980)
Crawford (1980) told that these finds could been seen in the Middlesborough Collection.
References:
Crawford, G.M., Bronze Age Burial Mounds in Cleveland, Cleveland County Council 1980.
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.
Cup-Marked Stones (lost): OS Grid Reference – SE 9657 8840
Archaeology & History
In the autumn of 1848, antiquarian John Tissiman (1850) and his associates took to uncovering two burial mounds amidst a large cluster of them on the eastern edge of West Ayton Moor. This one at Way Hagg was quite a big fella, measuring 36 yards across. When they cut into its northern edge towards the centre, 8-10 feet in, they came across an upright stone, nearly two feet high, on which five cup-marks had been cut. (see sketch, no.2) Slightly beyond this were three other stones (in sketch, nos.1, 3 & 4), each with cup-marks on them, beneath which was a tall urn. Whether or not the carvings had been deliberately positioned to cover the urn, we do not know. Nonetheless, we can be reasonably assured that these petroglyphs had some mythic association with death when they were placed here.
Tissiman gave us the following detailed measurements of the respective carvings:
“1: Nearly even surface. Length, from 16 to 18 inches; breadth, 10 to 20 ditto; depth, 8 to 9 ditto; with large oval hole cut in the centre, 7½ inches long, 4 inches broad, and 3½ inches in depth. On the opposite side are three holes, from 2 to 3 inches in diameter, and from 1 inch to 1½ deep. 2: Uneven surface. Length, 23 inches; breadth, 14 inches; depth, 13 inches; with five holes, from l½ to 3½ inches in diameter, and 1 to 1½ inches in depth. 3: Uneven surface. Length, 33 inches; breadth, 22 inches; depth, 10 inches, with four holes, the largest being 4½ inches in diameter and 3 inches deep; the others, from 1½ inches to 2 inches in diameter, and 1 to 1½ inches deep. 4: Uneven surface. Length, 27 inches; breadth, 23½ inches; depth, 10 inches, with 13 holes, from 1½ inches to 5 inches in diameter, and ¾ of an inch to 3 inches in depth; also three lines at the end of the stone.”
The carvings were included in Brown & Chappell’s (2005) fine survey, but they weren’t able to find out what happened to them after Tissiman’s excavation. They remain lost. If anyone has any information as to where they might be, please let us know.
References:
Brown, Paul & Chappell, Graeme, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors, Tempus: Stroud 2005.
Tissiman, John, “Report on Excavations in Barrows, in Yorkshire,” in Journal British Archaeological Association, April 1850.
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.
Ring Cairn (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NO 5381 7877
Archaeology & History
Location of site on 1864 OS-map
This is one of many sites that were thankfully recorded by the fine pen of Andrew Jervise (1853) in the middle of the 19th century, without whose diligence in antiquarian interests all knowledge would have vanished. His works remind me very much of those by the late-19th early-20th century writer Harry Speight in Yorkshire, whose veritable madness on that region’s history remains unsurpassed even to this day. But I digress…
Jervise told us that,
“About the year 1830, while the tenant of Fernybank was levelling a hillock in the haugh between the farm-house and the Powpot Bridge (about two miles north-west of Colmeallie), he removed a number of stones varying in length and breadth from eighteen to twenty-four inches. They were ranged singly, and stood upright in a circle at short distances from each other, enclosing an area of about twelve feet in diameter. On the knoll being trenched down, the encircled part (unlike the rest of the haugh, which was of a gravelly soil) was found to be composed of fine black earth; but on several cart-loads being removed, operations were obstructed by a mass of stones that occupied much the same space and form as the layer of earth. Curiosity prompted the farmer to continue his labours further, but after digging to the depth of three or four feet, and finding stones only, he abandoned the work in despair, without having discovered anything worthy of notice… Had this cairn been thoroughly searched, it is probable that some traces of sepulture might have been found in it.”
A short time after this however, Jervise reported the finding of “old warlike instruments, both in the shape of flint arrow-heads and stone hatchets, have been found in the same haugh, and so late as 1851 a spear-head made of iron, and about fifteen inches long, was also discovered; it was much corroded, but had part of the wooden hilt in it.” These were prehistoric artifacts that were subsequently moved to Edinburgh’s central museum where, I presume, they remain to this day.
About ten years later the Ordnance Survey lads came here and were fortunate to be able to meet with the same man who’d uncovered the site. They told that,
“in contradiction to (Jervise’s narrative), the tenant of Fernybank who gave the information to Mr. Jervise, states that he continued the search to the bottom of the Cairn and found a quantity of Charred wood.”
There were a number of other prehistoric sites in this neck o’ the woods, many of which were also destroyed but, again, were thankfully recorded by Mr Jervise.
References:
Jervise, Andrew, The History and Traditions of the Land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns, Sutherland and Knox: Edinburgh 1853.
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.
Tumuli (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NU 273 046
Archaeology & History
In a lengthy letter describing the cist burial at Cliff House, its author, Mr W. Dunn (1857) told that there were additional prehistoric remains nearby, that had only recently been destroyed. He told:
“It appears that, a few years ago, in the immediate proximity of the present discovery (at Cliff House, Ed.) two or more tumuli were found which contained urns and bones; and flint arrow heads of elaborate finish have been occasionally met with.”
I can find no additional information about these sites.
In the same article, a Mr Kell told that during the construction of the Amble piers a half-mile to the west, “some years ago, he was sojourning in the neighbourhood, and …human remains were found on the removal of sand by the waves in a violent gale from the East.” What else is known of this place?
References:
Dunn, W., “Ancient Sepulchral Remains,” in Proceedings Society of Antiquaries Newcastle-upon-Tyne, volume 1, no.34, 1857.
Cist (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NU 2730 0486
Archaeology & History
Site location on 1926 map
In November 1857, Collingwood Bruce read out a paper that had been sent to him by the Rector of Warkworth village (Rev. W. Dunn), describing “ancient sepulchral remains” that had been found near the cliff-edge above Pan Rocks near Amble’s lighthouse. It was a lengthy account which, in passing, also mentioned several other prehistoric sites close by that have long since been destroyed and which we have very little information about. Mr Dunn’s (1857) letter told:
“In the middle of April last, about 50 yards NE of the Cliff House, Amble, and about 20 yards from the end of what is called Warkworth South Pier, the pilots came upon a long upright stone, standing out of the shale to the height of twelve or fourteen inches,which had been laid bare by the recent heavy gales, but which, from its rude appearance, did not afford the idea of anything beyond a mere accidental tilting. Alongside this upright stone was a large unwrought slab, which, on being raised, was found to be the covering of a cist or sepulchral chamber containing a perfect skeleton. The figure was lying on its left side, with the head to the south-west, having the knees much doubled and with the right arm thrown back. By its side stood an urn of unbaked clay. This urn, now in the Museum of the Duke of Northumberland, resembles in size and shape that which was found a few years since at Hawkhill, and which is preserved in the Museum of the Antiquarian Society of Newcastle. It contained a small quantity of dark earth.
“Having given this general outline of the discovery, I shall proceed to offer such observations as I have been able to make,and have considered worth recording. I grieve to say that before the period of my visit the spoiler had been busy with these venerable remains. The skull had been broken up, the jaws smashed, every tooth appropriated, and the bones indiscriminately mingled, after many a century of undisturbed repose.
“The cist or chamber containing the remains was composed of four slabs inserted edge-wise in a cavity which appeared to have been dug out of the friable shale which lies upon the harder rock in this locality. It ranged south-east and north-west, and measured as follows: depth, 18½ inches; width, 26 inches; length at bottom, 4 feet; at top, 3 ft 4 in.; the difference between top and bottom measurements being accounted for by the shrinking of the ends. The cavity in the shale was much larger than the cist, and the space between the slabs and the shale was closely filled-in with stones, roughly broken, commingled with earth and larger stones. The side slabs projected somewhat beyond the ends. The bottom of the cist was covered to the depth of about half an inch, with dark, unctuous mould. Amongst the rubbish comprising the filling-up of the space above-mentioned, was found an angular piece of silex, probably an unfinished arrowhead; and in the south-west corner of the cist lay a large, smooth cobble stone, which, when considered in conjunction with the flint flake, the imagination may easily construe into the club of this ancient denizen of our shores. The slab which constituted the cover of the cist was of great size and extended in every direction considerably beyond it; and the upright stone was set up, not at one of the ends, but along its length. It is remarkable that a close inspection of these stones gave no trace of chisel-marks in any part. In order that the cover might lie level, pieces of shale, flags, etc., were laid on the uprights which formed the cist, wherever an irregularity presented itself.
“Within the memory of man, the rock ran out from this point for some yards into the sea at a considerable elevation; but the construction of a pier in the immediate neighbourhood has caused the removal of much of the stone, and the spray of our wild sea waves now dashes over the spot which for countless generations may have been peacefully tenanted by these nameless bones. At the same time, it does not appear probable that at any period there has been at this particular point a very deep covering of the sand and bent-grass which are found thick and rank upon the adjacent links.
“The skull must have been very characteristic, having attracted general observation from the extraordinary lowness of the frontal region, the great development of the occipital portion of the head, and the width and length of the lower jaw from its anterior junction to the articulation of the temporal bone. One person observed that during life the man “must have measured as much to the top of his eyebrows as to the top of his head.” The teeth are said to have been very beautiful and regular, and quite sound. With the exception of a front tooth, which was missing in the lower jaw, they were perfect. The thigh-bone measured 19½ inches, indicating a man of large size; whilst the porous internal organization of the bones gave probable evidence of comparative youth.
“The urn is unbaked, of a light clay colour, and measures in height 8 inches, in depth 7¼ inches, and in diameter 5½ inches. It is ornamented with zigzag scoring, alternating with dotted lines,and upright (and sometimes slanting) scorings, which appear to have been made with some rude instrument whilst the clay was moist. The scorings are continued over the edge of the rim. On being rather roughly seized by one of the men, it being expected that it contained treasure, a piece was broken off; but no material injury has been occasioned. The stone found in the cist does not resemble any that one may pick up on the neighbouring shore, and attracted attention from its bearing no assignable relation to what I may call the masonry of the tomb. I have since learnt that stones are not infrequently found in Teutonic graves on the Continent, and that recently a singular oval stone was found in a tumulus on Petersfield Heath.”
All trace of this site has disappeared. Mr Bruce posited the idea that the round stone in the cist may have been the one that ended the life of the buried man! An intriguing thought. And that the urn “no doubt, contained some portion of the feast prepared on the occasion of his funeral.”
References:
Dunn, W., “Ancient Sepulchral Remains,” in Proceedings Society of Antiquaries Newcastle-upon-Tyne, volume 1, no.34, 1857.
