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McCole's Castle is a Neolithic chambered cairn located in Caithness, northern Scotland, and protected by Historic Environment Scotland. Constructed during the Neolithic period, the monument consists of a stone cairn built to enclose and mark a burial chamber, a form of collective tomb widespread across northern Britain around 3500 to 2500 BCE. The site rises from bedrock of Middle Old Red Sandstone formed during the Middle Devonian period, a geology comprising conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone and mudstone that would have provided readily available building stone for the cairn's construction.
The monument represents an important surviving example of Caithness's Neolithic heritage, a region particularly rich in chambered cairns and other megalithic structures. The local landscape and available stone types shaped how such monuments were built, with builders exploiting the stratified sandstones and siltstones of the area. McCole's Castle stands as evidence of the early farming communities who inhabited the far north of Scotland, whose architectural legacy has endured for nearly five millennia.
McCole's Castle, chambered cairn is a scheduled monument protected by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM467. View the official record →
McCole's Castle is a Neolithic chambered cairn located in Caithness, northern Scotland, and protected by Historic Environment Scotland. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM467.
McCole's Castle, chambered cairn dates from the neolithic period, and is classified as a chambered cairn. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
McCole's Castle, chambered cairn 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 SM467.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Watenan,fort 100m SSW of,Ulbster (2.2 km), Cairn of Get, chambered cairn, cairns and cists (2.3 km), Broughwhin, cairn and stone row 190m NW of Groat's Loch (2.4 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of McCole's Castle, chambered cairn'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.
McCole's Castle, chambered cairn stands on Middle Old Red Sandstone (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Middle Devonian. The rock here is conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone and mudstone.