Hidden Britain AtlasOpen the map
All places › Circles & monuments
Ancient monument

Clava Cairns

Near Inverness, Highlands

Bronze Age tombs inside stone rings, lined up with the midwinter sunset.

Clava Cairns is a group of burial cairns, each ringed by standing stones, set in a quiet grove. Two of the cairns have passages aimed at the setting sun on the shortest day of the year.

Read the full story, see it on the map, get directions and find what else is nearby in the free Hidden Britain Atlas map.

Open Clava Cairns on the mapReport a sighting here
When
c. 2000 BC
Where
57.4741, -4.0737
Group
Circles & monuments

Visiting

Historic Environment Scotland. Free and open all year.

Cover of The Ledger of Lost Britain by Cale Mills
From the book

The Ledger of Lost Britain

The kerbstones are graded, larger and redder to the south-west, smaller and whiter to the north-east.

The Romans arrived in AD 43. For most people that is where the history of Britain begins. But by the time the legions landed, people had already been living on these islands for thousands of years. They had hunted, farmed, mined flint, dragged stones across the country, raised a hill by hand, and buried their dead in great tombs. They left no written words. What they left was the ground itself. Every place in this book can be visited, or has been dug up, or is in a museum.

Buy on AmazonAll books by Cale Mills

Nearby mysteries