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Scotland Clava Cairns, near Inverness

The inspiration for Craig na Dun in Outlanders?

We first visited Clava Cairns 50 years ago. We’d never seen anything like them before and were entranced by the stone cairns set back off the road surrounded by trees. They weren’t easy to get to, involving a bus and long walk. Few people visited and they were a secret and magical place.

Times change. Now the cairns are very much on the tourist route and there is a huge car and coach park. Not only are they close to Culloden Battle Field, they are also believed to be the inspiration for Craig na Dun in the very popular TV series ’Outlanders’. Fans arrive in their droves for the chance to take a selfie of themselves stepping into the stones.

Many of the trees have now been felled leaving the site open to the road. Admittedly the trees were planted by the Victorians, who thought the cairns had links to the Druids, and the site should be set in a grove of trees. The cairns would have been built in a treeless landscape. Even at 5pm there was a steady stream of visitors. The magic was still there, but it wasn’t quite the same…

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The cairns date from 3000-4000 years ago and were a Bronze Age cemetery. It was also part of a wider Bronze Age landscape with over 30 different monuments. The cairns were of two types, ring cairns with a complete ring of loose stones and chambered cairns accessed by a passageway. Both had circles of small stone standing stones round them. Aerial views show two passage graves, a central ring cairn and a later kerb cairn. Each was short lived and may only have housed a few bodies, possibly even one. No offerings survive. Once they went out of use, the tombs were sealed, surrounded by a row of stones round the edge of the cairn and a ring of standing stones. Different coloured coloured rock was used and, when first constructed, they would have looked colourful with red, pink and white stones. The site was reused about 1000BC when the small kerb cairn was built.

The north east and south west passage cairns have a stone circle round them and a neatly arranged row of larger stones around the outside of the cairn. The central passageway is neatly lined with large stones as is the base of the centre of the cairn. Originally these cairns would have been roofed and may have been as tall as 3m. The inside of the walls is slightly corbelled.

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The central passageway was probably low and people would probably have had to crawl along it to access the central chamber. It was lined with large stones. Both passage tombs seem to have been aligned to the winter solstice.

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The stones are now covered with moss and lichen, which hides the cup marks supposed to be on some of the outer stones. These can be seen on one of the stones inside the south west cairn, which is built on a slightly raised platform.

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Between the two passage cairns is the ring cairn is different as it is an unbroken circular enclosure with a thick wall around an open centre. It was never roofed.

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Larger stones line the inner and outer surfaces, and size was graded with the larger stones facing the rising sun. when excavated, there were the remains of human bones and signs of burning in the centre. This might have marked to site of a funeral pyre or ceremonies connected to burials in the adjacent passage tombs. When it went out of use, the centre was filled with rubble (which has since been removed) and it was surrounded by a stone circle and there are traces of ‘paths’ from some of the standing stones to the cairn.

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Near it is a small kerb cairn, a small ring of boulders made of different coloured stones and a larger ‘threshold’ stone which is supposed to have cup marks on it. This was constructed a lot later than the other three cairns. No-one seems clear as to its function. It has been suggested it have marked a low earthen mound covering a grave, although there is no archaeological evidence for this.

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There are information boards around the site and it is still very much worth visiting. Plan to visit early morning or late afternoon as the low sun is much better for photographs.


The cairns are more accurately known as Balnuaran of Clava, as there is another smaller burial site, nearby at Milton of Clava. This is a few minutes walk back along the road and across a field.

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There are the scant ruins of a small cairn, a standing stone and the remains of a medieval chapel.

The cairns are in the care of Historic Environment Scotland.
 
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