Description

The monument comprises 4 ring cairns. One is partially excavated; it is 15m in external and 4m in internal diameter and is surrounded by a low stone circle of which some 9 stones measuring up to 1m tall survive. The other three measure respectively about 8.5, 7.5 and 10.2m in diameter. The latter is complex and multiperiod; it has remains of a fine stone circle round it about 14m in diameter.

The cairns are much obscured by whin and may be larger. On the summit of Campstone Hill is a burial cairn about 6.5m across by 0.5m high. The monument also includes a possible house platform up to 7m across bounded on the downhill side by a 2m wide stony bank, up to 300 small clearance cairns, and numerous lengths of stony bank forming at least one field system. At the NW end of the area is an embanked hollow way and banks defining a further field system, of the pre-improvement period.

The monument comprising the elements referred to above and an area round them in which traces of activities associated with their use will survive is contained within an irregularly shaped area bounded on the SW side by the dyke marking the top of the presently cultivated farmland and measuring up to 600m NW/SE by up to 330m transversely as delineated in red on the attached plan.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The monument is of national importance as a surviving fragment of the pre-improvement landscape, including fine ring cairns, a house platform of a type unusual in Grampian, and parts of at least three field systems, which has the potential to improve our understanding of prehistoric funerary and ritual practices and also of prehistoric and pre-improvement farming practices.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records the monument as NO 89 SW 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland