Hill of Shebster

Nearest town:
Thurso (11km ENE)
OS reference:
ND01186462
OS sheets:
11, 12
Latitude:
58° 33' 30.83 N
Longitude:
3° 41' 55.06 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

The chambered cairn.... that’s better.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jul 5, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

Nice cairn. Shame about those that came after. Yeah a curse upon their lack of respect for the founding cultures of these Isles.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jul 5, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

Looking across apparent kerbing defining the defiled SE cairn toward the chambered cairn and, far right background, the long cairns of Cnoc Freiceadain. Both are exquisitely positionned, as you would expect.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jul 5, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

The cairn to the approx south-east of the chambered cairn is the saddest of places, an appalling brick structure now standing upon part of the arc. I didn’t want to stay, not with brickwork desecrating what appeared to be the site of a former chamber/cist(?) seen foreground.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jul 5, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

Clearly this must have been a very substantial chambered cairn in its day.... there are no information boards here – unlike at nearby Cnoc Freiceadain – and all the better for that.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jul 5, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

Presumably the remains of the passage to the chamber? Note another cairn beyond, the chamber of this, if there was one, obliterated by a parasitic brick structure.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 12, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

Two mighty long cairns crown the Cnoc Freiceadain upon the skyline beyond apparent chamber stones.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 12, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

A very substantial chambered cairn.... not in terms of elevation, but certainly area.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 12, 2014
Image of Hill of Shebster (Chambered Cairn) by GLADMAN

Didn’t venture here when I visited the Cnoc Freiceadain back in 2002. Needless to say I should have.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 12, 2014

Articles

Miscellaneous

Hill of Shebster
Chambered Cairn
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jan 17, 2018

According to the wondrous Audrey Henshall (1963) this represents “The heavily-robbed remains of this round, stalled cairn of Orkney-Cromarty type are 80ft in diameter”

Whereas the (equally great doing their thang) Ordnance Survey reckoned the following one year later:

“This turf-covered chambered cairn, 1.6m maximum height and approximately 26.0m in diameter, has been mutilated by an excavation trench in the NE. The top has been robbed revealing seven stone slabs forming the stalls of a gallery grave and two portal stones are in the SE corner of the cairn.” (N K B) 13/11/64

Worth a wander over when visiting the mighty long cairns upon nearby Cnoc Freiceadain.

Sites within 20km of Hill of Shebster

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