Cairns in Clusters: Chambered Cairns in Assynt

By Gordon Sleight

Carrachan Dubh chambered cairn near Inchdnadamph

Over the last twenty years I have thoroughly enjoyed tramping around Assynt, sometimes on my own and sometimes with groups of friends.  That sense of enjoyment is often enhanced by surprises.  It might be disturbing a mountain hare and seeing it race away at speed or watching an overhead confrontation between golden and white-tailed eagles, but those events have been rare. More frequently the surprises have been coming across all sorts of unrecorded archaeological sites. A classic example happened about 10 years ago when a small group of NOSAS and Historic Assynt members set out to look for rock art in Assynt and after several days of searching, completely failed to find so much as a single cup mark!  But the effort was rewarded with several surprises – an iron working site, a roundhouse, a chambered cairn and at least one smaller cairn with signs of a cist in the centre, none of which had been recorded.

Assynt has a relatively dense cluster of cairns concentrated in and around the valley that links Ledmore Junction and Inchnadamph.  Many of them were recorded long ago and described in detail in Henshall (1963, 1972) and Henshall and Ritchie (1995). However, in recent years finding ‘new’ cairns in the same area has become almost normal, but no less exciting! Overall numbers have now almost doubled to at least 30 chambered cairns and 14 smaller round cairns.  The Assynt cluster is now one of the largest concentrations known anywhere in Scotland and the numbers continue to increase.  The best preserved are now all scheduled and the scheduling highlights the fact that these are all part of a significant cluster. This high survival rate, which applies to other archaeological sites in Assynt, is most probably because the area has always been sparsely populated with little intensive farming or other forms of large-scale development.

Bad na Cleithe chambered cairn

Recently discovered chambered cairn, 500m from Bad na Cleithe Cairn

Carn Glas Chambered Cairns and Essich Farm, Inverness: An Interim Report

by Jonathan Wordsworth

The gorse covered mounds of Carn Glas on the skyline looking south west with a ploughed out roundhouse site in the foreground.

Background

In early march NOSAS members helped clear part of the gorse scrub encroaching onto the major Neolithic Cairn Carn Glas (Grey Cairn NH 6493 3830) sited on Essich Farm in Stratherrick above Inverness.  Sitting on a shallow saddle-shaped ridge on Essich Moor and overlooking the Moray Firth to east, the three interlinked cairns that form this monument make this, at 116 metres, the longest in the Highlands. Though now obscured by a modern forestry plantation, it is in a commanding position looking down the Moray Firth. For comparison the better known and partially reconstructed Camster Long Cairn in Caithness, itself comprising two round cairns, measures just under 70 metres in length.  This relative scale of the two cairns can be seen in the plans below drawn for Audrey Henshall’s Chambered Cairns of Scotland, where Camster is the second and Carn Glas the fourth image.

History of the site

The cairn lies on farm of Essich, one of the major tacks or holdings of the Mackintosh family with references to the land at least back to the 16^th century. 

The cairns at Carn Glas have been heavily robbed and the chambers emptied, probably as a source for stone dykes and other agricultural improvements dating to the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.  V Gordon Childe in 1943 suggested stones may have been taken from here to build the section of the Military Road (built from 1725) that lies to the west and runs towards Loch Ashie.

The first known mention of the cairn itself is on a sketch plan of the farm by an unknown surveyor dating to 1834. Forming part of the muniments of the Mackintosh of Mackintosh family, it is stored with other documents dealing with Essich in the National Archives in Edinburgh.

Crown copyright. Papers of the Family of Mackintosh of Mackintosh, National Records of Scotland, RHP2187

The surveyor has probably (the text and image here are a little obscure) described the site as:

Glaischcairnmore so-called

a collection of stones on the summit of three hillocks

He has also shown three separate cairns, the easternmost and still most prominent today, is labelled Cairn. There is a suggestion of four stones ringing the middle cairn but other details are obscure. However it does seem the site had already been heavily robbed by this time.  The wider plan shows the boundary of the farm defined by a row of boundary stones some of which still survive today and date to 1794 suggesting this was a time of major works on the farm when stones for dykes and buildings might be needed.

Tarradale Archaeological Project – Findings to Date

by Dr. Eric Grant (NOSAS)

Background to the project. The Tarradale Archaeological Project started as a private initiative around 2008 and was incorporated as an approved NOSAS research project in 2011. The Tarradale archaeological project aims to investigate and record the surviving archaeological evidence of the multi-period archaeological landscape of the Tarradale area and to interpret the chronological development of settlement and resource utilisation in the study area. The main activity of the project so far has been field walking which has been very successful and as data has been collected and analysed the parameters of the project have moved and the aims extended.

Aerial photo of Tarradale area with Tarradale house in the foreground. Tarradale Castle (destroyed 1308) was probably located above and below the steep bank in the field immediately below Tarradale House. (Picture by courtesy of Jim Bone).

1. Location and extent of the Tarradale study area. The study area comprises about 750 hectares of mainly agricultural land at the eastern end of the parish of Urray on the northern side of the inner Beauly Firth in Ross-shire. Historically the area was co-terminous with the old landholding unit of Tarradale  estate and the ecclesiastical parish of Gilchrist or Tarradale, which was a separate parish until becoming amalgamated with the parish of Urray in the late 16^th The historical centre of Tarradale was the old parish church, now surviving only as a mausoleum at Gilchrist. Following the building (or rebuilding) of Tarradale House in the 17^th century, Tarradale House became the administrative centre (caput) of the estate.

A large part of the area is raised estuarine beaches and that area today is flat or gently undulating high-quality agricultural land that is regularly ploughed. To the north of the former raised beaches the land rises towards the Mulbuie Ridge as undulating hillside mainly covered with boulder clay. Apart from Gilchrist Chapel and some standing stones probably erected in the Bronze Age, there are few visible archaeological monuments in the area that is intensively ploughed, although aerial photographs show cropmarks that can be interpreted as ring ditches, pits and enclosures. This contrasts with the more upland and less intensively cultivated area where there are standing monuments including Tarradale chambered cairn and an indeterminate feature which has been called a henge but is better referred to with the more general term of earthwork.

Tarradale chambered cairn

Carn Glas – A Life in Seven Acts

by Roland Spencer-Jones (NOSAS)

The Opening of the Cairn 12.10.15

Carn Glas is one of a cluster of six Neolithic cairns at the base of the Black Isle in Ross-shire. A trio of local archaeology groups have collaborated with the Adopt-a-Monument team of Archaeology Scotland in its restoration. The opening party for the “new” cairn happened during Highland’s Archaeology Fortnight, on October 12^th. Why did it need restoring? Well, it’s a story in Seven acts:

Act One started with the construction of a Cromarty-Orkney-type chambered cairn approximately 3600 BC, as the Neolithic farming package developed in the area. The passages of the chamber at the heart of the huge cairn were aligned north-west to south-east. They consisted of an entrance passage to the south-east, leading to a middle chamber, leading to an inner chamber. An excavation over two seasons by Tony Woodham in 1955-6 produced a series of artefacts dating to this period – a leaf-shaped Neolithic arrowhead, other flints, and numerous pottery shards.

Neolithic Arrowhead from 1956 excavation    (c) National Museums of Scotland

Rubh’ an Dunain, Skye: 8000 Years of History

by Martin Wildgoose

Aerial view of the Rubh’ an Dunain peninsula

Members of NOSAS walking towards the tackman’s house on Rubh’ an Dunain. Canna is on the skyline.

A warm sunny Sunday in early June saw NOSAS members gathering in the Glenbrittle campsite, at the foot of the Cuillin Mountains. The view south was spectacular, Canna seemed unusually close and South Uist and Barra lay in the haze on the horizon. Close at hand the Rubha an Dunain peninsular stretched out to the left of the bay with a ribbon of made-up path promising an easy walk to the point where 8000 years of Skye’s history lies exposed to view. Just an hour and a half later the group paused to enjoying a mid-morning coffee prior to crossing the Slochd Dubh (Black Hollow) where a late 18^th century wall marks the boundary between Clan MacAskill and Clan MacLeod – but more of that later.

The first people to leave tangible evidence of their stay on the peninsula were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who travelled throughout the islands off the west coast of Scotland on a seasonal round, in pursuit of food and tool resources. A site excavated at Kinloch on Rum (HER MHG 3987) between 1984 and 1986*, only a day’s boat journey away to the south west, may be the winter base for these pioneers. A small rock shelter (HER MHG4898) at Rubh an Dunain, partially excavated in 1932 by W Lindsay Scott**, contained many worked stone tools and the debris from their manufacture – evidence of repeated visits to the site during this period. Additionally a recently recorded lithic scatter on a terrace close to Loch na h-Airde shows that more sites of this period await discovery (the day in fact finished with NOSAS members happily picking fragments of worked bloodstone and mudstone out of a nearby burn).

Martin points towards Loch na h-Airde from just outside the rock shelter.

Lament for a once Magical Place – or “the Agony of a severely traumatised pair of Archaeological Sites”

by Meryl Marshall (NOSAS)

This is the story of two archaeological sites which have suffered severe damage through a catalogue of assaults by man in the name of “development”. The “patients”, for so they can be regarded, lie in Balblair Wood (read Ward!), near Beauly. They have received repeated injuries over the last 20 years and today are in a sad, sorry state – they have been in the wrong place at the wrong time!

Patient A is (or was) an extensive linear prehistoric site, centred on NGR NH 501444; it once comprised 13 hut circles, 2 chambered cairns, burnt mounds and a field system of clearance cairns and trailing banks occupying an area of 750m x 200m (maybe more) along the SW edge of the wood. Only 12 years ago this beautiful site with clearly identifiable features was well preserved and within open pine woods which had a mossy forest floor. The site was unusual in that it occupied a low lying river terrace quite close to the River Beauly and the Beauly Firth. It was the subject of one of the first NOSAS survey projects; see report on the NOSAS website.

Patient B is the fort known as Corffhouse or Lovat Bridge in the NE part of the wood, NGR NH 5135 4480, Canmore ID 12745, HER No MHG3401; it also has been the subject of a NOSAS survey.

Clava Type Cairns of the Inverness Area

by Anne Coombs (NOSAS)

Clava cairns are unique to a small area of Eastern Highlands of Scotland.  Identified originally along the valley of the River Nairn, a good start point for any tour of these sites is at Balnuaran of Clava near Culloden. Here Historic Scotland cares for a well preserved group of three circular burial cairns in a small area with a car park and interpretation panels (see the H.S. leaflet). Surrounded by trees beside the river this location can provide an atmospheric even ‘sacred’ sense of the past, especially at mid-winter or in the spring.  Two small chambered passage ‘Clava’ cairns with their associated stone circles are sited on either side of a ring cairn with its own stone circle.  The ring cairn (Highland Council HER MHG4366) appears to have been built at a similar time as the other cairns but is likely to have been used for a different purpose as it seems to have no entrance and may never have been roofed unlike the other cairns.  On the west of the site there is a later small kerb cairn part of later reuse of the cemetery 1000 years later.

The NE Cairn at Balnuaran of Clava, as seen on a NOSAS field trip in January 2015 (Alan Thompson)

The NE Cairn from the air (Scotavia Images)

The two chambered passage cairns (See HER MHG3013 and MHG3002) fit the ‘standard’ ‘Clava’ type with large stones on the inner and outer faces forming a kerb with a substantial fill of smaller stones between.  The passages are aligned to face the mid-winter sun at the solstice and experiments have shown that the sun arcs across the back wall of the cairn during the day.  The inner and outer facing stones have been selected carefully for size and colour and set into the cairn according to some lost pattern presumably in line with the use and beliefs of the builders of the cairns.  Many of the ‘Clava’ cairns have carefully positioned cup marked stones built into the cairns.  Some of the cup marked stones are visible on the outer face of the cairns, for all to see.  Others are hidden inside the cairn available originally only to those with access to the interior. Some stones are even placed so the cup marks are facing into the rubble fill of the cairn so only accessible to the builders and possibly a limited number of people, maybe the priests who knew their position?

The whole cairn would have had a corbelled roof.  Around the edge of each of the cairns at Clava a low platform was constructed.  The whole structure with its associated platform and stone circle was built in a single phase.  In the case of the ring cairn the platform was extended to three of the standing stones forming a sun ray appearance.  Although some of the stones of the associated stone circles are massive, investigation suggests they have relatively shallow socket holes as do all the inner and outer kerb stones of the cairns.  The stone circles provided another opportunity to include a carefully selected range of different types of stone of graded sizes.  The largest stones are often placed on the same axis as the passage facing the direction of the mid-winter solstice sun.