Kilmartin Glen - Ancient carved gravestones, and a 5500 year old burial chamber with standing stones

in Pinmapplelast year (edited)

Kilmartin is a small village in Argyll, Scotland which has an impressive number of iron ages sites in and around it, including a fascinating church yard which incredible carved gravestones.

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The entrance gate to the church yard is also a WWI memorial to fallen soldiers from the village. I've never seen one like it before. It has quite a few names on it, which is surprising considering how tiny the village is, and that demonstrates how terrible WW1 was.

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The churchyard and Kilmartin are famed for its carved gravestones. They date from the 1200s all the way to the early 1700s. And I have also seen some others similar to these in some other churchyards in the Argyll area - but they are not at all common.

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The designs are really stunning, and have lasted very well considering how many hundreds of years they have been exposed to the elements.

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Some of them are protected inside a small enclosure, and access to see them is free - like all of the interesting items within Kilmartin and the surrounding area.

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The church itself is also very quaint, but it wasnt open on this particular trip. It was built in 1835, and at only 188 years old, is by far the youngest thing shown in the pictures within this post !

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I've stopped in to see the stones many times and absolutely love them !

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As said, there are also a number of iron age burial chambers in and around Kilmartin as well, like the one above.

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The info board places this one at around 5500 to 5600 years old, which is quite incredible. So around 1000 years older than the pyramids of Giza ! From memory there are around 3-4 of these in the area.

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Also linked to the burial chamber is these standing stones, which I guess are of a similar age. Standing stones can be found all over Scotland, with the Orkney Isles having the best examples - but these are quite impressive too.

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These stones are fairly huge and probably extend fairly deep into the ground, and the mind boggles at how these would have been managed and man-handled into position all those years ago.

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It really is an interesting location and the amount of historic sites in the local area is quite astounding, and as said, are all free. It really is worth the visit if you like these type of ancient sites.

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Standing stones are just gobsmacking in my opinion, and I can't wait to see the reaction from Mrs T when she sees them in Orkney in the summer.

Those carvings, it is a marvel they have lasted in the elements.
What a great village and a new one on me hoosie!
Cheers for that
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The standing stones in Orkney are awesome. And yes, Kilmartin is a great wee place - it should be more widely marketed because it has so much to offer
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Yeah I shall have to suss Kilmartin out!

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Surprising what you show us friend @hoosie

Its a nice village with lots of cool stuff !

That’s very cool… great they tell you all about it on the signs too.
Thanks for showing us @hoosie 👋🏻😊
Have a nice evening 😎
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Absolutely !LUV this kind of stuff! It's impressive how much history around a small village.
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