Port Charlotte Chambered Tomb View all content for Port Charlotte

This sad ruin stands just south of Port Charlotte/ Port Sgiobha. Tucked in the long grass at the corner of the football field of Kilchoman Community Park, the chamber walls have nine stones standing plus one chamber divider. There's a lot of pebbles and other stones around in a haphazard rubbish-tip style. It's impossible for me to tell which way round it stood. The chamber's roughly north-south, and I'd guess the entrance was at the north from the hints of mound at the south. But maybe that's just cos the rest of the land's been cleared and levelled for the playing fields. This is surely the only place where you can kick a ball wide of the goal and have it land in a 5,000 year old death monument. We certainly didn't have that in the park where I grew up. I've seen places in worse condition, but something about this place depresses me beyond its state of preservation. It's the way it seems tipped out of a dumper truck as mess at the edge of a municipal sports ground. The (surely expensive) marbled info board is generic and says nothing about this site. It shows an intact cairn and says it's a Neolithic monument but nothing about its use. I cleared assorted plastic and broken glass from the chamber floor. To add to the uneasy vibe, two grey navy ships came up Loch Indaal as we approached, and they're now passing back out between me and Laggan Point. The view across the water to Beinn Bhan and the mountains of the east, round to The Strand and The Oa are rich and impressive, somehow simultaneously imposing and soothing, but this site is a sorry place indeed. Visited 16 June 05

Posted by Merrick 24th November 2005ce

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