Geograph - photograph every grid square

For details of the excavation and the contents of this site, see an older photo of this location: NS3678 : Walton Farm chambered cairn.

The habitat of this Neolithic cairn has experienced a number of changes in the last few centuries. As an example of a long-term historic change, the cairn is located in what was once the southern end of Walton Wood, but that wood is now long gone. The changes in recent times have been in the form of unauthorised digging (see final two paragraphs), so that the shape of the cairn is no longer evident. See NS3678 : Walton Farm chambered cairn for comments on another instance of this, slightly later, at the same site.

In neither case was the disturbance by the landowners, nor was it sanctioned by them.

The largest upright stone is 1.65m tall, and is composed of metamorphic rock (it appears to be gneiss). To its right is another stone, and a pit is evident next to the latter stone.

In the foreground are the other rocks that are scattered to the west of the main upright. The land on which this cairn stands belongs to Walton Farm.

For other views of the site as a whole, taken on a later visit, see NS3678 : Walton Farm chambered cairn, NS3678 : Walton Farm chambered cairn, and NS3678 : Walton Farm chambered cairn.

[An aside: Roy's "Military Survey of Scotland" (1747-55) shows a "Mountmisery" (which is not to be confused with NS3985 : Mount Misery, an alternative name for Knockour Hill). The topographical details of Roy's map allow his "Mountmisery" to be placed somewhere in the general area where this chambered cairn is located; it is difficult to be more precise than that. In his book "Old Cardross: A Lecture" (1880), David Murray presumably refers to the same place when, in his appendix of place-names in the Cardross area, he cites an entry in the Register of Baptisms for 9th Feb 1740, showing a certain Robert Morrison as having been born at "Mont Misery"; Murray gives no indication of its location, perhaps already unknown by his time.]

Finally, in view of the unauthorised digging that has taken place at this site, it is probably worth stating what most readers do not need to be told, namely, that excavation of archaeological sites should be left to professional archaeologists (the site was fully and professionally excavated in 1954, and there are no hidden treasures awaiting the unscrupulous digger).

Quite apart from the disregard shown to the landowner, unauthorised digging is vandalism, disrupting sites and destroying valuable archaeological evidence. Note, too, that many archaeological sites are protected by law.