Ri Cruin 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: parking is at Lady Glassary Wood car park, a 550 m walk from the cairn's entrance along a single-track road with no pavement; there is no parking at the monument itself. No charge or free statement is published, so the status is recorded as unknown. The same car park serves Temple Wood and the Nether Largie cairns.

Driving pin: Lady Glassary Wood car park, 618 m north-east of Historic Scotland's own pin on the cairn. The walk to the site includes grass and a stile. Historic Scotland gives journey planners only.

About

Ri Cruin is the southernmost of the five round burial cairns that make up Kilmartin Glen's linear cemetery, and it stands apart from the rest in a small fenced grove of trees. It was built in the Bronze Age, about 4,000 years ago, and held three stone-lined cists. When peat was stripped away in the 1700s and 1800s the cairn was exposed and then badly damaged by farm improvements; a lime kiln was even built into it, breaking one of the cists. Excavators in 1870 found the cists empty apart from a little cremated bone. A side slab of the southern cist is carved with axe heads, a rare design found only here and at the two Nether Largie cairns. Today you see a low crescent of rounded stones with a large central cist. There is no parking at the cairn: walk 550 m from Lady Glassary Wood car park along a single-track road with no pavement, then over grass and a stile.

Check today’s timesSee all times

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

Opening times may change at short notice.

Historic Scotland: 'Kilmartin Glen: Ri Cruin 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: Ri Cruin Cairn'.

Walk carefully on the single-track road from the car park, which has no pavement, then over grass and a stile to the cairn, which stands in a fenced enclosure among trees. The cists are open to view, and the carved axe-heads are on a side stone of the southern cist. No toilets or other facilities.

Photo: The low, curving stone spread of Ri Cruin Cairn on grass in a sunlit grove of tall trees, a cist slab at its centre. Gordon Hatton, CC BY-SA 2.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Remains_of_cairn_at_Ri_Cruin_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2547637.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.