Avielochan

Nearest town:
Grantown-on-Spey (17km NE)
OS reference:
NH909167
OS sheet:
36
Latitude:
57° 13' 40.97 N
Longitude:
3° 48' 26.33 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by markj99

Stone Lined Passage of Avielochan Clava Cairn from the chamber.

Image credit: Mark Johnstone
markj99
markj99 Sep 14, 2020
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by thelonious

17/06/2017 – Avielochan cairn. A fine setting and June’s a good time of year for a visit.

thelonious
thelonious Jun 26, 2017
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by GLADMAN

Not the best hand held image in appalling weather.... however note that the monument is sited upon the left hand end of this natural ‘long barrow’ ridge beneath the trees. Not that obvious, to be honest. The field was in crop, but gate open. Stick to the field edge and every one’s a winner. The way it should be, no mutual animosity.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 4, 2011
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by GLADMAN

Looking across the chamber, highlighting construction.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 4, 2011
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by GLADMAN

Hanging out in the chamber, looking up the passageway....

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 4, 2011
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by GLADMAN

And a heavy cairn.... I mean that in a positive way, too. Man.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 4, 2011
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by GLADMAN

As Greywether notes.... no remaining circle stones. But an excellent passage and chamber.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 4, 2011
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by GLADMAN

The site is like a little lost world. Just off the major A95/A9.... yet a million miles away, so to speak.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 4, 2011
Image of Avielochan (Clava Cairn) by GLADMAN

There’s an excellent Clava here.... honest.

Image credit: Robert Gladstone
GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jun 4, 2011

Articles

Avielochan

thelonious
thelonious Jun 26, 2017

17/06/2017 – Really liked this one. Good access. We came from the east, across the bridge over the train track. Doesn’t look much on approach, just a grassy knoll with a few nice trees on top. Taking the field edge to the knoll, the cairn seemed to appear out of the grasses from nowhere. Lovely setting. Fine kerb stones and I liked the small slope down into the centre. Well worth a visit.

Avielochan

drewbhoy
drewbhoy Aug 24, 2016

If you could join Avielochan and Granish together there would almost be a complete Clava Cairn. Like Granish it is a superb site surrounded by beautiful scenery.

We approached from the south from Granish taking the first road east on the A95. Take the twisty track past the houses and wee loch (called Avie Lochan) until a sharp corner. Look north into a field with what looks like a long cairn to find the cairn nestled amongst the trees.

Visited 31/7/2016.

Avielochan

GLADMAN
GLADMAN Jul 4, 2011

Loved it here... such an unassuming monument, yet nonetheless utterly beguiling, set upon a natural, grassy knoll beneath a canopy of trees, the latter helping to diffuse the trademark Cairngorm downpour. However, unlike that much more (in)famous grassy knoll far to the west, there is no conspiracy here. Just an overwhelming aura of peace, quiet, calm..... which is pretty unexpected, considering the site is within sight of the busy A95 and the parallel A9.

Although there is, sadly, now no sign of a surrounding stone circle, Avielochan is a Clava-style passage grave, retaining a pretty substantial kerb and classic, well defined ‘womb’ chamber within. Nice. Thanks to the landowner – open gate, no barbed-wire fence – I’ve rarely encountered a more welcoming ancient site. The visitor, lying within, feels as safe and secure as.... well, a baby in its mother’s womb. Fancy that? Almost caught myself sucking my thumb, so I did.

The clava cairn name-checks the nearby loch, a fine stretch of water notable for being a favourite with, appropriately enough, water birds. Holiday homes upon the shoreline allow ‘twitchers’ to keep watch without leaving their armchairs. As a result parking is (probably) iffy, assuming the ‘no unauthorised vehicles’ sign at the A95 entrance to the estate is anything to go by. Consequently I would recommend parking in said layby and walking. Upon approaching a footbridge over a railway line (after walking alongside the northern shore line of the loch) look for what appears to be a long barrow within the field to your left, tucked up beside the track. It’s not, of course, but none the worse for that. According to Canmore records (A S Henshall 1963; C G Cash 1910) there was ‘another smaller and much robbed cairn about 36ft to the SW on an extension of the knoll; about 24ft in diameter with a few low kerbstones projecting through the roof’. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of this addition at the time....

Note that there are the remains of a hillfort upon Tor Beag, a rocky promontory rising beyond the aforementioned roads to the approx north-west.

Avielochan

greywether
greywether Jun 13, 2005

A well preserved Clava passage grave which can be a bit overgrown in summer.

The chamber and passage were left open after the 1909 excavation and are still very clear. There are no surviving circle stones.

Turn E off the A95 at NH87991680 and park at the end of the houses. Continue along the track to just before the railway bridge. The site is on your left amongst trees. One gate, which was open on this visit.

6.6.05

Miscellaneous

Avielochan
Clava Cairn
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Aug 31, 2009

This could be said to be hearsay really about something that happened at some indeterminate point – but it could well be true.

Near Aviemore [...] there are two stone circles. One is two miles and a half from the station, at the edge of a small loch called Loch nar Carraigean in the Ordnance Survey Map. The other is a half mile from the station, near a cluster of small farms called Milton. I was told that a good many of the large stones which had stood at intervals, forming the outer ring of these circles, had been removed a good many years ago, to be used in the building of Aviemore House.

From a letter on p360 of Archaeological Review v4, 1889-1890.

(so this refers to this site and Aviemore.)

Sites within 20km of Avielochan

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