Millstone Hill East

Nearest town:
Inverurie (7km ENE)
OS reference:
NJ6956720866
OS sheet:
38
Latitude:
57° 16' 38.86 N
Longitude:
2° 30' 17.23 W
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Sites within Millstone Hill East

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Images

Image of Millstone Hill East (Cairn(s)) by thelonious

31/12/2013 – I don’t know why I was carrying two headtorches in broad daylight either but they came in handy for my photo :)

thelonious
thelonious Dec 31, 2013
Image of Millstone Hill East (Cairn(s)) by drewbhoy

Pine needles highlight the cross, with the cairn behind.

Image credit: drew/amj
drewbhoy
drewbhoy May 17, 2012

Articles

Millstone Hill East

thelonious
thelonious Dec 31, 2013

31/12/2013 – Last day of the year and I fancied a bit of a mad adventure to end on so I turned again to the fieldnotes of drewbhoy for inspiration and picked this cairn to try and find. It turned out as tricky as it looked. Starting from the same place as Drew,we headed north first, then looped west to climb Millstone Hill and back east through the woods to find the cairn. Trees are well spaced, so no problem there but under foot it’s pretty hard going. Got there in the end. Cairn is very overgrown and not that exciting. The stone with Ogham inscription is worth the trip on it’s own though. I really liked it. Back to the car via the ring cairn, which was again hard work and a bit tricky to find. Nice way to finish the year and made it back before the rain started, which is always a good thing.

Millstone Hill East

drewbhoy
drewbhoy Jul 16, 2009

To the north of Mains of Afforsk there is lay-by in which I parked to have a look of the OS maps. No tracks or anything could be seen but I estimated that I was at least 600 meters north of the farm entrance, which in theory put me closer to the cairn. I walked for at least a mile thru bogs, ditches and burns as well as dead trees and heather until I came to dry stane dyke. Turning right, therefore uphill, and kept going until the wall ran out. However luck was on my side and the forest clearing was just ahead with cairn in the middle.

The cairn is about 15 meters wide and 1 meter high. As Canmore says it has suffered thanks to the forestry work. I couldn’t find any kerbs or stones of any kind except one. This stone was cross incised and had scratch marks on it. Was it worth the hike probably, but after some photos were taken the heavens opened along with thunder and lightning. The speed of the weather changing took me by surprise so a soaking was added to my collection of cuts and bruises.

To be honest I was looking for the ring cairn and became lost. This cairn, luckily for me, appeared from out of nowhere. The ring cairn can wait another day and I’ll stop at Newton of Braco instead!
edit. Not being very wise on the subject the scratch marks are indeed Ogham.
Visited 16/07/09.

Sites within 20km of Millstone Hill East

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