The 4,000 year old Corrimony Cairn is what is known as a Clava Style of cairn. It consists of a circular structure piled high with carefully placed stones. Around its outside are standing stones.

The structure now has no roof but the huge stone which once capped it is still there and in the past cup marks could be seen on it. To enter you need to crawl through a short tunnel but the space inside is circular and well built.

The monument is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland and is well maintained with a car park near by.

The cairn at Corrimony is a large circular mound of water-worn pebbles and boulders, within a kerb of larger stones set on edge. At the centre of the cairn is a round chamber, which would once have had a corbelled roof completely enclosing it. HES

The grave was excavated by Professor Piggot, during the summer of 1952. 

Visitors are asked not to climb up the cairn but there is evidence that they are ignoring this and you can see where they have scrambled to the top.

Before excavation the cairn measured about 60′ in diameter, and 8′ in height, and was composed, for the most part, of water-worn stones. A large, flat, cup-marked stone, now thought to have been the cap-stone of the chamber lay on top.

Excavation revealed traces of a crouched inhumation burial beneath the flagged floor of the chamber. There were no grave-goods.

Of the 11 stones forming the outer ring round the cairn 4 are modern additions and 2 have been reset in recent times. The stones range from 5′ – 9′ in height. An area of cobbling, apparently an original feature, was revealed between two of the stones on the NW. One of the stones on the NW is said to bear cup-marks on its outer-facing side, but these are now unconvincing.

The only artifact found during excavation, was a bone pin, calcined and eroded, which is now in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS, EO 956).

S Piggott 1956; A S Henshall 1963

A stone on the NW side of the outer circle has cup marks on the outer face. Another stone, which lay on the W side of the cairn until 1830, and is now on the top, also has cup marks. A Mitchell 1875 CANMORE

The roof inside the cairn was corbelled and topped with one single large stone. Then the whole structure was covered with the rounded stones. It would have been not just an impressive and skilled monument but rather beautiful.

The inside had a cobbled floor.

When you visit this monument think of it set within the context of the surrounding landscape which was and still is a fertile valley. One can only wonder at the people that must have lived and farmed in this valley 4,000 years ago and of the person the cairn was constructed for.

Fiona Grahame