Rhives Chambered Cairn

Golspie is, like much of this area of Scotland, rich in sites dating back thousands of years but this is the oldest site we've visited. It's set on the slopes of Beinn Bhraggie, overlooking the town, just inside an area of mature, mixed woodland.

The cairn is best approached from Rhives Farm along one of the many foot and cycle tracks maintained in Beinn Bhraggie woods. The cairn is just inside one of the fields of Golspie Tower Farm, a gate leading out from the woodland giving good access.

While the site is on a spur of slightly higher ground the monument would have been even more pronounced when it was built, the monoliths being covered then by a mound of loose stones some 18m in diameter.

From the cairn there are magnificent views across the Moray Firth and down into Golspie. With the entrance to the inner chambers being to the SSE -  to the right in this picture - the area in front of it, which would probably have been open and flat, where the ceremonies took place, would have enjoyed the full view.

This is the view from the east. When first described, there were 13 upright monoliths but today only seven remain, all of them forming the sides of three chambers, so the original cap stones that covered the chambers are all missing.

This plan shows the chambers, '1' being the entrance chamber while the mature tree is in chamber '3'.

The site is an historic monument, described as being Neolithic and built between 3800 and 2500BC, so it's around 5000 years old. Scottish chambered cairns have been divided into 'types'; this one is of the Orkney-Cromarty type. A detailed description of these cairns is here.