Braeside, Eday – two structures covered by a single cairn?

Tuesday, August 5, 2025 (6:46 AM)

The robbed-out remains of the Braeside stalled cairn in March 2023. (📷 Dan Lee/ORCA)

By Sigurd Towrie

Unlike its immediate neighbours, stone robbing at Eday’s Braeside cairn has largely reduced it to just a few upright stones — the orthostats that once separated its rectangular chamber into three distinct compartments.

The stalled cairn’s remains lie in an area of low moorland, about 170 metres to the south-east of Huntersquoy, with the Vinquoy Hill cairn on the skyline to the north-west, some 300 metres away.

Rectangular in plan, the cairn is about 30 metres long by 18 metres wide. But despite its substantial size the only evidence of a chamber is confined to the southern end. This led to suggestion that a second chamber, or structure, may lie in the northern half:

“Seventeen feet behind the chamber, where the cairn has been robbed almost to ground level, there are several large slabs which suggest there may have been a second chamber…” [1]

If this were the case, we would have a feature similar to the arrangement found at the Calf of Eday Long. However, there is now no visible evidence of a second chamber and confirmation would require excavation.[2]

Braeside stalled cairn.
(Davidson & Henshall. 1989. The Chambered Cairns of Orkney) — Braeside stalled cairn. (📷 Davidson & Henshall. 1989. *The Chambered Cairns of Orkney*)

Aligned north-south, the known chamber was 6.2 metres long by two metres wide and divided into three compartments by orthostatic pairs projecting from the inner walls. Only two pairs of the divisional orthostats and the back-slab in the end-cell survive. The presence of the back-slab confirms the known chamber did not extend northwards – unless it was remodelled and reduced in size during a later phase of activity.

Access was by an entrance passage in the southern end, that could be traced for c2.25 metres when first recorded. The subsequent discovery of walling suggests the passage was 60 centimetres wide.

The remains of the cairn and internal orthostats. (📷 Dan Lee/ORCA)

Divisional orthostats within the remains of the stalled chamber. (📷 Dan Lee/ORCA)

Calf of Eday parallels?

The Calf of Eday Long is one of three known chambered cairns on the Calf of Eday, an uninhabited island to the north-east of Eday. [3]

It is a large, rectangular cairn containing two separate chambers – a small, horseshoe-shaped structure at the western end and a four-compartment stalled chamber to the east.

Measuring c.20 metres by 8.2 metres, the cairn had slightly curved sides and ends. The larger, stalled, chamber, was aligned on its ENE-WSW axis, with an entrance passage (c.3.3 metres long and 70 centimetres wide) in the eastern side.

Typical of the Orkney-Cromarty stalled structures, the eastern chamber was divided into four compartments, between c.1.4 metres to 1.8 metres long, by three pairs of projecting orthostats. Against each side of these were smaller slabs set on edge to form the supports for stone “benches”. The suspected remains of benches were found in three of the compartments.

The largest surviving orthostat stood over two metres high, suggesting a minimum height for the chamber’s roof.

So far so typical…

Plan of the Calf of Eday, showing the stalled chamber (right) and the heel-shaped structure.
(📷 Calder. 1937. *A Neolithic double-chambered cairn of the stalled type and later structures on the Calf of Eday, Orkney*)

But where the Calf of Eday Long stands out is that it “absorbed” a smaller structure into the body of the cairn at its western end. This heel-shaped building had a sub-rectangular chamber, about three metres long by two metres wide, which lay at a 45-degree angle to the axis of the stalled cairn.

A pair of orthostats flanked the entrance, with another pair in the centre of the walls dividing the interior. A third pair were set up against the end wall.

During his 1936 excavation, Charles Calder noted 1.22-metre-wide walls of the building were of “inferior craftsmanship” to that encountered in adjacent stalled structure. He was also of the opinion that the western structure was contemporary with the stalled chamber and in use at the same time.[4]

It is difficult to see how this could be the case. The western end of the stalled chamber truncates a section of the heel-shaped structure, suggesting it was earlier. In addition, the body of the covering cairn completely blocked its entrance.

With this in mind, and given other examples of structures being incorporated into the fabric of chambered cairns, there seems little doubt the western building was an earlier construction – one considered appropriate to be assimilated into the fabric of the stalled cairn.

To Davidson and Henshall, the western chamber did “not conform to either the Bookan or tripartite plan” but they still considered it to be an early chambered cairn [2]. This remained the sole interpretation until excavations at the Stonehall settlement in Firth, between 1994 and 2000, revealed a building resembling the Calf of Eday western structure.

The Stonehall excavators wrote:

“The Calf of Eday Long building is difficult to interpret given the situation at Pool [Sanday], where some early ‘dwellings’ possess no formal fireplaces. Noting its structural relationship with the stalled cairn, the encased building is clearly of early construction and has a relatively thin outer wall with no indication of a cairn.” [5]

So whether the absorbed structure was an early “tomb” or whether it was a dwelling or mortuary building remains open to debate.

Whatever its role, after abandonment Calder found that the entrance passed had been carefully blocked.

“The entrance passage, which is somewhat irregular in shape and wider than normal, was deliberately closed up for the whole of its length by a well-laid infilling of stones, with some especially large blocks placed transversely outside its mouth.” [3]

Whether the blocking operation took place immediately prior to the construction of the enveloping cairn or after the structure went out of use is not clear.

Notes

[1] https://www.trove.scot/image/2343145
[2] Davidson, J. L. & Henshall, A. S. (1989). The Chambered Cairns of Orkney. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
[3] The Calf of Eday Long, like its neighbours, undoubtedly had name by which it was known to the islanders, but what that was is now lost to us. Their current titles are modern inventions, implemented to minimise confusion.
[4] Calder, C. T. (1937) A Neolithic double-chambered cairn of the stalled type and later structures on the Calf of Eday, Orkney. In Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland Volume 71, 1936-37.
[5] Richards, C., Brophy, K., Carruthers, M., Jones, A., Jones, R. and Jones, S. (2016) Good neighbours: Stonehall Knoll, Stonehall Meadow and Stonehall Farm. In Richards, C. and Jones, R. (eds) The Development of Neolithic House Societies in Orkney: Investigations in the Bay of Firth, Mainland, Orkney (1994–2014). Windgather Press, pp. 91-127.