Nether Largie Mid 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 says parking is available at Lady Glassary Wood, but publishes no charge or free statement, so the status is recorded as unknown. The same car park serves Temple Wood, the Nether Largie standing stones and the South and North cairns, so the cairns can be seen on one walk.

Driving pin: Lady Glassary Wood car park, 747 m south-west of Historic Scotland's own pin on the cairn. The cairn is about 1 km south of Kilmartin on a road off the A816. Historic Scotland gives journey planners only.

About

At the centre of the 2 km line of burial cairns on the floor of Kilmartin Glen, Nether Largie Mid Cairn gives a view up and down the whole linear cemetery, built between about 5,000 and 3,500 years ago. This cairn is Bronze Age, probably about 4,000 years old. Excavated in 1929, it held two stone cists, each made for one person. One is left open, and on its stones you can see pecked carvings of a cup and ring mark and an axe head, a very rare motif in Scotland that appears also at Nether Largie North and Ri Cruin and probably marks a high-status burial. As the climate cooled, peat smothered the glen; when it was dug for fuel in the 1800s the cairns were exposed and robbed for field walls and roads. This one lost stones but mostly survived, while a cairn just to the south was almost entirely quarried away. Walk about 750 m from Lady Glassary Wood car park through sheep pasture.

Check today’s timesSee all times

Nether Largie Mid CairnOpen all year; an unstaffed open site, no hours published

Opening times may change at short notice.

Historic Scotland: 'Nether Largie Mid 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: Nether Largie Mid Cairn'.

The site sits on working farmland, so follow the Scottish Outdoor Access Code to keep yourself and the animals safe. One of the two burial cists is open at the edge of the cairn, its capstone propped up so you can look in; an information board stands beside it. No toilets or other facilities.

Photo: The low stone spread of Nether Largie Mid Cairn with an open cist under its raised capstone in the foreground, the glen and hills behind. Euan Nelson, CC BY-SA 2.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nether_Largie_Mid_Cairn_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4185692.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.