Today I took a trip out to a place I must have gone by many times, but never even knew existed until it was pointed out by a friend. Huly Hill Cairn is a place passed unnoticed daily by thousands of motorists, though it stands just a few metres away from Newbridge Roundabout where two motorways, the M8 and the M9 join. In fact the site is surrounded on all sides by roads, industrial units, car dealerships and housing, while up above large passenger jets fly overhead as they take off from nearby Edinburgh Airport. Huly Hill Cairn is a site where not only does ancient society meet with modern society, it crashes straight into it.
.jpg "Huly Hill Cairn")
Huly
Hill Cairn is believed to be around three and a half thousand years old, and it
stands at three metres in height and is thirty metres across. A stone retaining wall was built around the
cairn in the 1830s. There is some
argument that rather than being classed as a cairn the hill is in fact a tumulus,
an ancient burial mound.
.jpg "Huly Hill Cairn")
.jpg "View of Huly Hill Cairn and Standing Stone")
.jpg "View of Huly Hill Cairn and Standing Stone")
It
would appear that there was once a stone circle around the cairn, though how
many stones this originally consisted of is unknown, with only three standing
stones now remaining. Like much in
ancient history the purpose of the cairn and the stones is now lost to
time.
.jpg "Standing Stone by Huly Hill Cairn")
.jpg "Standing Stone by Huly Hill Cairn")
.jpg "Standing Stone by Huly Hill Cairn")
In
1830 the cairn was opened up and from it was recovered a bronze spear head,
fragments of animal bones and a heap of animal charcoal. Then, in 2001, an archaeological examination
took place at a nearby site prior to a construction project. During excavations there an iron age chariot
burial was discovered. Some of the wood
from the wheels was radiocarbon dated and this showed that the chariot must
have been constructed between 475 to 380 BC, making it the oldest discovered
chariot burial in Britain. A
reconstruction of the chariot was created by Robert Hurford and is now on view
at the National Museum of Scotland.
.jpg "Huly Hill Cairn")
.jpg "Plane from Edinburgh Airport passing over Huly Hill Cairn")
As
I wandered around the cairn site traffic growled along the nearby busy roads
and planes roared above as they took off from the airport. However, there was something quite peaceful and
tranquil about the site. A murder of
crows hopped and jumped in the newly cut grass around the cairn, searching out
insects and other food morsels. Watching this scene, I could easily imagine that
though the landscape has changed dramatically since the construction of the
cairn, the ancestors of these crows could well have been foraging around the
same site thousands of years before. In
a time when much of the surrounding country would have been woodland and the
only roads would have been well trodden dirt paths.
I
left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my walk in a gap in the retaining
wall around the cairn.
.jpg "Skulferatu #72")
.jpg "Skulferatu #72 in a gap in the wall")
.jpg "Skulferatu #72 in a gap in the wall")
.jpg "Map showing location of Skulferatu #72")
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude
55.938618
Longitude
-3.404986
I used the following sources for information on Huly Hill Cairn and the surrounding standing stones –
The Archaeology and Prehistoric
Annals of Scotland
By Daniel Wilson
1851
Exploring Scotland’s Heritage,
Lothian and Borders
John R Baldwin
The Royal Commission on the
Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland
1985
National Museums of Scotland
National
Museums Scotland - Newbridge Chariot
Canmore
Canmore
- Huly Hill, Newbridge
