Location
Three miles south south west of Fraserburgh, travelling from Fraserburgh on A981 turn left at crossroads in centre of village, cairn is on the right after a short distance.
Memsie, Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire
OS Map Reference
NJ 976 620
Description
A very well preserved example of a larger round cairn, with no turf covering. Once part of a whole landscape of cairns that have been removed. The information board mentions some of the finds listed below (info from RCAHMS) but at this date it seems unclear where exactly particular artefacts were excavated and how accurate the descriptions of them were. The overall impression however is of a large important sacred site dedicated to funery rites over an extensive period of time.
Related Information
There were three cairns (each about 100yds in circumference and 40ft high) on Cairn Muir in 1723, spaced about 100yds apart and associated with many small cairns (W Macfarlane 1906; Aucheries 1723).
One of the cairns was dug into at its centre before 1780 (C Cordiner 1780). Only human bones were found though many of the stones at the centre were burnt almost to vitrification.
A report in 1790 (Scots Mag 1790) stated that a stone cist, containing bones and earth, a flint 'dart-head', and a "little block of flint, was found" in the large cairn of Memzie, and by 1845 the remaining cairn had been reduced to about 60ft in circumference and c.15ft high.
In the foundation of one of the other cairns was discovered an urn containing calcined bones. There were also found several human skulls, and a short sword with an iron handle. The urn is Medieval (NMAS). According to Gordon, who gave the urn to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS) in 1827 (Accession no: EH2), nothing was known to have been found within the urn but human bones were found within one of the two cairns removed. A sword, no longer in existence, was found lying beside the urn. It was "one-edged; the hilt of brass, the blade iron, seventeen inches and a quarter long, one inch and a quarter broad at the guard, from whence it tapers to the point; when found it was enclosed in a wooden scabbard". According to the New Statistical Account (NSA) the skulls and "a short sword with an iron handle" were presented to the NMAS by Gordon at the same time but the NMAS catalogue records only the accession of the urn "found with part of an iron sword".
The surviving cairn is scheduled - "Cairn of Memsie". .
D Wilson 1863; NMAS 1892; J Gordon letter to Soc Antiq Scot, 1827.
A Cb beaker (Mitchell 1934) and an Late Bronze Age sword (Coles 1962) were found under a tumulus at Memsie some years before 1849.
They were donated to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS 1849) but do not figure in the catalogue. (NMAS 1892)
Era
Neolithic era
Categories
Photographer
- David Watson Hood
Unavailable Data
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