Approaching storm over ancient burial ground

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

A favourite walk of mine is up Pendreich Road and today I crossed some fields to take a close look at the Fairy Knowe, an impressive-looking burial mound which sits, intact, on the edge of Bridge of Allan golf course above Bridge of Allan.

It would seem to have been placed with quite deliberate views across the landscape, reaching for countless miles into the Grampian Mountains north and west across the moors of Gargunnock and Flanders towards Lomond and beyond?

Sir J.E. Alexander and his team first excavated the Fairy Knowe in 1868.
They found that:
"The excavation revealed a cist in the centre of the cairn, laid on the original surface of the ground and measuring 2ft 6in in length, 1ft 6in in breadth and 3ft in depth. Its walls were formed partly of upright slabs and partly of small stones laid horizontally, while the floor and the roof each consisted of a single slab. Within it there was a deposit, 6in in depth, of black earth, charcoal and fragments of human bone among which pieces of a skull were conspicuous. The cist was covered by a heap of large stones, 8ft in diameter and 13ft in height, and this in turn was covered with earth, in which there were charcoal, blackened stones, fragments of human and animal bones and unctuous black earth. Among these remains were found six flint arrowheads, a fragment of what was once thought to be a stone spear-head, and a piece of pine which, it was suggested, might have formed part of a spear-shaft."

Folklore
Obviously an abode of the faerie folk in bygone times,
This place may have been an important site for the Pictish folk, and the legendary nearby hill of Dun Myat has long been regarded as an outpost of one Pictish tribe.