Monument record MHG28909 - Creag a-Chairn, Canna

NG20NW 27 2423 0564

The wasted remains of a cairn lie on the summit of Creag a-Chairn, overlooking the track to Tarbert and Tarbert Bay. The cairn is roughly oval on plan, measuring 15.8m from NE to SW by 12m and still stands up to a maximum of 1.4m in height on the NE, although elsewhere it has been robbed down to bedrock. The perimeter is defined by a boulder kerb which is especially well-preserved on the NE. In the SW half of the cairn, a series of low orthostats protrude through the turf, four of them set roughly in a line some 3m in length, and a fifth off-set to the SE; two other boulders may have been displaced from this setting of stones. The character of this setting is uncertain, for although it is evidently not the remains of a simple cist, the stones are too slight to be considered the slabs of a passage or chamber. Vestiges of a later structure, probably an animal pen, overlie the cairn material on the N, and there is a possibility that the setting of stones may also be considerably later in date than the cairn.
(Canna 232, 1017).
Visited by RCAHMS (IMS, ARG), 4 June 1994