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Kinnelhead Cottage Cairn is a Bronze Age burial monument located in Dumfriesshire, in the south of Scotland. The cairn stands on bedrock of the Gala Group, a formation of wacke deposited during the Telychian period of the Silurian. This hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock would have made stone-gathering a demanding task for those who constructed the monument, requiring the collection of fieldstones and quarried material to build the burial heap.
The cairn lies 540 metres south of Kinnelhead Cottage, positioned within the rolling moorland and agricultural landscape typical of this region of the south-west Borders. Such monuments are characteristic of the Bronze Age period, when communities marked the graves of their dead with substantial stone structures. The construction would have served both as a grave marker and as a durable testament to the status and identity of the deceased within the local community.
The site is now protected as a scheduled monument by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM12655, recognising its significance as a Bronze Age funerary structure. The cairn survives as a tangible link to prehistoric settlement patterns and burial practices in Dumfriesshire, contributing to understanding of Bronze Age society across southern Scotland.
Kinnelhead Cottage, cairn 540m S of is a scheduled monument protected by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM12655. View the official record →
Kinnelhead Cottage Cairn is a Bronze Age burial monument located in Dumfriesshire, in the south of Scotland. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM12655.
Kinnelhead Cottage, cairn 540m S of is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Historic Environment Scotland — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Scotland. The official designation reference is SM12655.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Park Hill, fort (4.6 km), Plewlands, scooped settlement and farmstead 485m SW of (4.6 km), Parks, scooped settlement and house platforms 770m NNW of (4.6 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Kinnelhead Cottage, cairn 540m S of's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Kinnelhead Cottage, cairn 540m S of stands on Gala Group, bedrock that formed in the Telychian. The rock here is wacke.