Dunragit Aerial Images

Timber henge, Dunragit   A large Neolithic circular enclosure with two concentric rows of pits, and a pit-defined avenue heading southwards towards the large earthen mound of Dunragit Mote was first recognised by cropmarks visible on aerial photographs.   Excavation by Manchester University in the early 2000s revealed it to be a large timber henge, where one circle of timbers had eventually gone out of use and been replaced by another. Some of the holes for the timbers were over a metre across and nearly a metre deep. They could have held timber uprights made from entire tree trunks up to 10m high, taller than Stonehenge. This is the largest timber henge known in Scotland.   Ritual activity continued on the site through to the Bronze Age, when a number of burial mounds or cairns were constructed in the immediate area. Later ploughed away, the ditch round their circumference survives as a dark circular cropmark, of which three are clearly visible on this photograph.