Clava Cairns

The Clava Cairns lie in a quiet patch of beech and oak woodland a mile south-east of Culloden Battlefield, on the south bank of the River Nairn. Three Bronze Age cairns stand in a tight line, two passage graves with corbelled chambers and a central ring cairn, each surrounded by its own ring of standing stones. The complex is dated to around 2,000–1,500 BCE; the central ring cairn is the unusual one, with no entrance passage, its chamber sealed at construction. Archaeologists read the layout as a deliberate axial group rather than three independent monuments.

The two passage cairns align south-west to the midwinter sunset, a recurring orientation across Neolithic and Bronze Age tomb architecture in Britain and Ireland. On 21–22 December, the setting sun reaches into the inner chamber for a few minutes through the entrance passage. Information panels at the entrance lay out the alignment and the chronology.

Clava gave its name to a specific north-Scottish cairn type, “Clava cairn” is the technical term for this distinctive passage-cairn-and-stone-circle combination found across the inner Moray Firth basin and Aberdeenshire. Other examples include Corrimony in Glen Urquhart and Balnuaran of Clava itself (this site is the type locality).

Free, unstaffed and open at any time, operated by Historic Environment Scotland. The site is paired by many visitors with Culloden Battlefield a mile away by road, and recognised by Outlander readers as the inspiration for Craigh na Dun (the books and TV adaptation place the standing stones fictionally elsewhere).