Tag: prehistoric tombs

Carn Ban, Cairnbaan, Lochgilphead, Argyll

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NR 84009 90709

Also Known as:

  1. Cairnbaan
  2. White Cairn

Getting Here

Misty mound of Carn Ban

Take the A816 out of Lochgilphead and head north as if you’re going to Kilmartin.  Nearly 2 miles along, take the left turn along the B841 Crinan road.  A few hundred yards along, go over the canal bridge and about 70 yards along there’s a left turn onto the track into the Knapdale Forest.  Go along here (there’s a parking spot) for 200 yards until your reach the grasslands on your left.  If you walk into this bit of scrubland, you’ll see the rounded fairy-mound over the fence in the adjacent field, almost overlooking the canal.  Y’ can’t really miss it.

Archaeology & History

Carn ban, or the White Cairn, from which the hamlet of Cairnbaan gets its name, is a good-sized round cairn, now much overgrown in vegetation, though is still accessible and easy to see.  Just above the water-line of the Crinan Canal, the mound is about ten yards across and more than six feet high and is in a good state of preservation.  Originally, according to J.H. Craw (1930), the tomb was 12 feet high and 40 feet across!

Carn Ban on 1873 map
Carn Ban, looking NE

In the 1850s, the site was examined by a Dr Hunter of Lochgilphead, and Mr Richardson Smith of Achnaba, and a cist that had been built straight on top of the bare rock was uncovered near the centre of the cairn, nearly four feet long and aligned northeast to southwest.  Inside it a thin slab of stone—“2 feet long, 17 inches broad, and 2½ inches thick”—had been slid up against the western end of the chamber and on it was a curious petroglyph design comprising “several incised diamond-shaped figures, one within the other”—five altogether, and the commencement of a sixth—similar to ones found at Newgrange in Ireland.  This carving was removed and given to the Scottish National Museum where it still resides.  Inside the cist, Hunter and Smith found a deposit of some “yellow sand with some black charcoal and several burnt bones lying upon its bottom”, and a subsequent search unearthed some flint fragments.

The Carn Ban is a good site—but if you’re wanting something bigger, something more impressive, I suggest heading just a few miles north…

References:

  1. Beckensall, Stan, The Prehistoric Rock Art of Kilmartin, Kilmartin Trust: Kilmartin 2005.
  2. Campbell, Marion & Sandeman, M.L.S., “Mid-Argyll: A Field Survey of the Historic and Prehistoric Monuments”, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 95, 1964.
  3. Craw, J. Hewat, “Excavations at Dunadd and at other Sites on the Poltalloch Estates, Argyll”, in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 64, 1930.
  4. MacBrayne, David, Summer Tours in Scotland, D. MacBrayne: Glasgow 1886.
  5. Royal Commission Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Argyll – volume 6: Mid-Argyll and Cowal, HMSO: Edinburgh 1971.
  6. Simpson, J.Y., “On Ancient Sculpturings of Cups and Concentric Rings,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, volume 6, 1866.
  7. Simpson, James, Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, etc., Upon Stones and Rocks in Scotland, England and other Countries, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1867.

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

Lauder Common, Lauder, Berwickshire

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Cairn:  OS Grid Reference – NT 49340 46162

Getting Here

Modern cairn on the old one

Take the B6362 high road between Lauder and Stow and, regardless of which direction you’re coming from, when you reach the top heights of the moorland road with views all around, you need to keep your eyes peeled for where a dirt-track runs south and, diagonally across the road on its north side, is a dirt-track-cum-parking-spot (if you came from Stow, you should’ve already noticed the cairn on the skyline on your way up).  There’s a hut circle in the heather by the parking spot.  From here, just walk over the heather nearly 300 yards north.  Y’ can’t really miss it.

Archaeology & History

Looking to the southeast

The first thing that you see as you approach here is a modern cairn which is sat upon the more ancient and completely overgrown one.  You can’t really see the “ancient” section of it until you walk round to its more northern side, where you’ll then notice how the new cairn has been built on top of a small but artificial rise in the ground, about ten yards across.  This is the original ancient cairn.  Sections of the ground have come away on its southern side, revealing a scattered mass of loose stones.  It doesn’t seem to have been excavated but has all the hallmarks of being typically Bronze Age by the look of it.  Of particular note is the superb view from here, not least towards the legendary Fairyland of the Eildon Hills, standing out clearly about 10 miles to the south…

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Pike Hill, Stamfordham, Northumbria

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Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NZ 0774 7048

Archaeology & History

1928 photo of carving

Found inside a prehistoric tomb that was excavated in the late 1920s “by Messrs R.C. and W.P. Hedley at Pike Hill, near Stamfordham,” this fascinating-looking carving was found on a stone that “was overlying the primary burial” cist in the middle of the tumulus, measuring “2 feet 9 inches long by 2 feet wide and 12 inches deep, with an orientation on the longer axis of NE.”  As we can see in the old photo that accompanied Mr Hedley’s (1928) short article in Antiquity journal, four single cups are arranged in a rough square and are joined with each other by a single line, running from cup to cup, outlining a clear quadrilateral formation.  Two other single cups are outliers on the left and right side of the ‘square.’

A second smaller cist was also found inside the same mound and on the central inner face of this was another, more simplistic carving described as “a very fine cup-mark 1½ inch in diameter and ¾-inch deep.”  These carvings are no longer in situ (I think they’re in Newcastle Museum) and apparently this second single cup-marked stone can no longer be located.

References:

  1. Beckensall, Stan, Northumberland’s Prehistoric Rock Carvings, Pendulum: Rothbury 1983.
  2. Beckensall, Stan, Prehistoric Rock Motifs of Northumberland – volume 2: Beanley to the Tyne, Abbey Press: Hexham 1992.
  3. Hedley, R. Cecil, “Ancient British Burials, Northumberland,” in Antiquity Journal, volume 2, December 1928.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian