1907-1908.] Clava: ''The Stonehenge of Scotland" 57 



•outer one consists of the ordinary style of pillar stones, twelve 

 in number, and nearly equidistant, but as the road intersects 

 the ring, two of them had to be shifted a few feet. The tallest 

 of them is 7 1 feet high. The intermediate ring is formed of 

 rough boulders or blocks of stone from two to four feet long and 

 broad, and placed close together with the smoothest face out- 

 wards, and having an inward slope, the purpose of which we 

 :shall presently see. The inner circle consists of short upright 

 slabs, set edge to edge and close together. The circle-builders, 

 having constructed the skeleton of the circle, — the three rings, 

 — filled up the space between the two inner rings with small 

 stones, and then proceeded to erect the central chamber by 

 laying courses of the best procurable slabs on the innermost 

 ring, carrying the walls perpendicularly to a height of six feet 

 or thereby, then making the slabs overlap inwards till the 

 space was small enough to be covered by one slab. Thus 

 there was formed a chamber with a rude dome-shaped roof, 

 12 J feet in diameter, and nearly the same in height. Simul- 

 taneously with this wall-building the cairn of small stones was 

 heaped up around to bind and support the walls, the inter- 

 mediate ring with its inward slope forming a containing and 

 retaining wall to the cairn, which was added to until it covered 

 the top of the chamber to some depth. There was an entrance 

 to the chamber on the south-west side, two feet wide at the outer 

 end, and three at the inner end; and it seems to have been 

 -about 4J feet in height. The sides of the passage or tunnel 

 ^re of similar construction to the inner ring, and the roof was 

 formed of slabs laid across. The roofs of cairn and of passage 

 are both gone, the cairn having been opened about 1828 by 

 orders of Mrs Campbell of Kilravock Castle, and the chamber 

 and cairn are now ruinous ; the interior of the chamber is 

 partly filled with dShris, and the stones of the cairn overflow 

 the intermediate ring in various places. When the chamber 

 was opened, fragments of two rude vases were found in the 

 centre, containing calcined bones. They were embedded in a 

 mass of clay quite different from the natural soil, which is 

 gravelly. 



Circle No. 12, the eastmost of the three, is very similar 

 to No. 10 in dimensions, construction, and in the present 

 condition of the cairn and chamber, which was opened some 



