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Cairnholy Chambered cairns
 Kirkcudbrightshire 

Just NW from Ravenshall on the A75 along the coast is a right turn signed to the cairns with a parking area beside the first site.

Cairnholy I
Chambered cairn
NX 517 538

This is a Clyde-type chambered cairn with an impressive curved façade of eight tall uprights reaching to 3m in height. In front of the entrance there is a closing stone, now fallen. The cairn, measuring 43m x 10m, has been robbed of most of its material. The chamber is built with in an inner and outer compartment, the inner one built as a box, inaccessible from the outer one.

The entrance and closing stone

 
 

The curved façade

The site was excavated in 1949.and among the objects found in the outer compartment were part of an axe of jadeite, a rare green stone imported from the Alps and a leaf-shaped arrowhead. The axe is kept in the Royal Museum of Scotland, in Edinburgh. Some 150m up the lane is another chambered cairn.
 


View of the chamber

 
 

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Feb 2002