It is easy to read such a thing as a natural feature of the upland, a wrinkle in rough grazing land, but the circular form gives it away. This is a cairn, a mound of stones raised by human hands, its original surface now buried beneath sod and vegetation, its purpose unrecorded.

The cairn measures roughly four metres in diameter and stands about three quarters of a metre high, modest dimensions that nonetheless represent a deliberate act of construction on a gently south-facing slope. What makes the site more than a solitary curiosity is its company. A second cairn lies approximately twelve metres to the south, and a third sits in an adjacent field to the southwest, suggesting that this corner of the Miskish foothills was once a place of some significance, possibly funerary, possibly territorial, possibly both. Cairns of this kind are broadly prehistoric in origin, though without excavation the date of construction and the people responsible remain unknown. The blanket bog that now encases them, formed through centuries of waterlogging and peat accumulation, would have looked very different when the cairns were built, and the choice of a south-facing slope hints at an awareness of aspect and visibility that was common to many prehistoric monument builders.