Cnoc Chaornaidh North-West

Nearest town:
Ullapool (22km SW)
OS reference:
NC29900841
OS sheet:
15
Latitude:
58° 1' 56.26 N
Longitude:
4° 52' 52.08 W
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Cnoc Chaornaidh North-West

thelonious
thelonious May 7, 2017

28/04/2017 – Well here’s a good cairn to finish a great day out walking in an area which is just jam-packed with old stuff to look at.

If you like a chambered cairn or two, the area round here and Ledmore is well worth a trip. It has something for everyone from long day walks to short stops to visit pretty accessible stones. Most with fine views of the amazing surrounding landscape.

I just didn’t have the strength to visit the other two nearby chambered cairns that day and I was needing a cup of tea so after a while admiring these fine stones we headed back to the car. Next time hopefully.

Cnoc Chaornaidh North-West

GLADMAN
GLADMAN Sep 1, 2013

Archaeologically speaking this site rising to the north of Stratheskie farm possesses, in my opinion, the finest surviving remains of the three chambered cairns located in the immediate vicinity of Cnoc Chaornaidh. As such, it was perhaps inevitable that it would occupy the position with (arguably) the least intoxicating views, set upon a saddle between the aforementioned craggy eminence and the terminus of its western spur, the latter obscuring that utterly wondrous Inverpolly skyline. What a drag! However the disappointment is relative, of course, the sweeping vista to the south-east, not to mention that northwards toward Benmore Forest, well worth an eulogy or two in their own right. Yeah, if only I had the words.......

According to Audrey Henshall (1963) this monument represents another chambered cairn of Orkney-Cromarty type – albeit lacking the cairn, yet again – with the majority of the uprights of a polygonal chamber still in place, together with “a number of considerable and apparently widely spaced stones on the periphery”. J M Howell [1976] reckoned the cairn was originally heel shaped, as opposed to round. To be honest it is a surprisingly substantial monument to ‘stumble across’ upon a Scottish hillside, raising the question of just how much more is ‘out there’ awaiting (re)discovery by the amateur punter? I would surmise ‘quite a lot’, to be fair. Although the chamber stones are not as large as those forming the chambered cairn below to the south-east, the structure here is more coherent. If only some of the accompanying cairn had survived this would indeed have been a classic to rival the upper site at Loch Borralan to the north-west.

But there you are.... what might have been, eh? However with brilliant washes of golden sunlight streaming through a gloweringly dark cloud mantle to illuminate chambered cairn and landscape as one, this is nevertheless still a hauntingly evocative place to rest for a while. Quality. Even if the traveller is denied a view of the splendid Suilven accorded visitors to the other cairns. Needless to say I guess we’ll never know what the intentions of the people who erected these monuments to their dead truly were? No. And how infuriating for us modern people who think we know everything to realise that... in actual fact.... it seems we don’t, after all.

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