Balnuaran of Clava

Three stone mounds lie one behind the other on a line, not quite straight, running from north-east to south-west. They date from the Late Neolithic or the early Bronze Age, and each is surrounded by a stone circle. A Kerb Cairn about 1000 years younger also lies on the site. The three Clava cairns each consist of a central, roughly circular stone mound. Two are passage graves and the middle one is a ring cairn. The two passage graves formerly had corbelled stone roofs, which have been lost over time. All three mounds are surrounded by a platform of rubble that holds the outer kerb stones in position. These outer stones are graded by height, the tallest at the south-west of each mound and the lowest at the north-east, and the same applies to the kerb stones of the inner chambers.

Red and white stones were used in all the cairns: red sandstone, red conglomerate or pink pegmatite, and pale granite, gneiss and mica schist. A very few stones are black. When the cairns were built they must have appeared very colourful and high in contrast. The stones were arranged by colour as well as by size, so that certain areas appeared entirely white or entirely red.

The north-east cairn is a passage grave whose material is piled to a height of almost 10 feet (about three metres). Its passage, aligned on the winter solstice, was rather low, so that one could not stand upright in it, yet the rays of the setting sun on the day of the winter solstice reached the inner chamber. The chamber has a diameter of 12 to 13 feet (about 3.7 to 4 metres) and is formed by kerb stones 2.5 to 3.9 feet (about 0.8 to 1.2 metres) high. The outer diameter of the cairn is 55 feet (about 16.8 metres), and its outer edge is formed by stones between 1.6 and 3 feet (about 49 and 91 centimetres) high, one of which bears cup marks. A circle of eleven stones surrounds the cairn. Because it is not quite circular, it lies between 24 and 37 feet (about 7.3 and 11.3 metres) from the outer edge of the mound. Its irregular shape could result from the re-erection of three fallen stones in the nineteenth century.

The middle cairn is a ring cairn, that is, a closed, roughly circular ring of stones with a central chamber that cannot be reached by a passage. With a diameter of 18 to 21 feet (about 5.5 to 6.4 metres), the chamber is larger than in the two neighbouring cairns and can never have had a roof. The outer diameter is 52 to 60 feet (about 15.8 to 18.3 metres) and the cairn stands up to four feet (about 1.20 metres) high. Many of its outer kerb stones have been lost, and some of those that remain bear cup marks. The most striking surviving outer stone is a monolith stump 4.3 feet (about 1.30 metres) high. After the mound ceased to be used as a grave, the inner chamber was filled with rubble, which was removed again during the repair work of the 1930s. The cairn is surrounded by a circle of nine monoliths, the tallest of which stands in the south-west of the circle, which has a diameter of 100 feet (about 30.5 metres). Unlike the other two cairns, this mound is linked to four of the monoliths of the circle by stone causeways six to eight feet (about 1.8 to 2.4 metres) wide.

The south-west cairn is a passage grave very similar to the north-east one. It lies about 80 feet from the middle cairn and has an outer diameter of 52.6 feet (about 16 metres). Its passage is 19.9 feet (a little over six metres) long and 2 feet (about 0.6 metres) wide. Like the passage of the north-east cairn it is aligned on the winter solstice, and it begins at the south-west of the cairn. The inner chamber is not quite circular, with a diameter between 11.6 and 13 feet. Its kerb stones, which reach 6.9 feet (about 2.10 metres) in height, include some with cup marks, as does one of the monoliths of the stone circle. The circle consists of ten monoliths standing between 24 and 28 feet (about 7.3 to 8.5 metres) from the edge of the mound. Three of them fell in the nineteenth century and were re-erected in 1876. Two had to be moved for the construction of the present access road and no longer stand in their original positions.

The Bronze Age Kerb Cairn is a small burial place surrounded by a ring of 15 stones, lying south-west of the middle cairn and north of the south-west cairn. It probably dates from around 1000 BCE and is heavily damaged. It was uncovered only in the excavations of the 1950s. It too is built of red and white stones, one of which bears cup-and-ring marks.