Glebe Cairn

PricingFreeFree for all visitors

Free entry for everyone

Entry

Free for everyone

Pricing details

Free entry for everyone; no membership card is needed.

ParkingParking not known

The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.

Parking details

Historic Scotland names no parking for Glebe Cairn: it is at Kilmartin Glebe, just below Kilmartin village, off the A816. A small car park on the A816 in the village, about 240 m east of the cairn, is the nearest public parking; no official charge or free statement exists, so the status is recorded as unknown. Kilmartin Museum, next to the church, has its own car park for museum visitors.

Driving pin: the A816 car park in Kilmartin village, 237 m east of Historic Scotland's own pin on the cairn. Glebe Cairn is the first monument on the walk south from Kilmartin down the line of cairns in the glen. Historic Scotland gives journey planners only.

About

In a field just below Kilmartin village, Glebe Cairn is the northernmost of five great burial cairns that run for 2 km down the floor of Kilmartin Glen, a linear cemetery built between about 5,000 and 3,500 years ago. Today it is a broad mound of rounded stones about 30 m across and 3 m high. Excavation in 1864 found a stone cist at its heart, ringed by two circles of upright boulders that may be the oldest part of the monument. A jet necklace of 26 beads was found and later lost in a house fire, but a pottery food vessel survives in Kilmartin Museum nearby; it and a second vessel resemble Bronze Age pots from Ireland and may have been imported. Nothing of the cists can be seen now, but the cairn makes a good first stop on the walk south past the Nether Largie cairns. The way in crosses working farmland with livestock, and there are no toilets at the site.

Check today’s timesSee all times

Glebe CairnOpen all year; an unstaffed open site, no hours published

Opening times may change at short notice.

Historic Scotland: 'Kilmartin Glen: Glebe Cairn is free to visit and is open year-round.' No hours, closures or notices on 21 October 2026; not on Historic Scotland's closures page. Historic Scotland's directory lists it as 'Kilmartin Glen: Glebe Cairn'.

The cairn is reached through working farmland, so follow the Scottish Outdoor Access Code to keep yourself and the livestock safe. It is a large mound of stones with an information board; nothing of the inner cists is visible. There are no toilets at the site; the nearest are in Kilmartin village and at Kilmartin Museum.

Photo: The broad stone mound of Glebe Cairn in a grass field below Kilmartin, with an information board in front and wooded slopes behind. Bob Embleton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glebe_Cairn,_Kilmartin_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2572131.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.