Memsie Cairn

Memsie Cairn stands alone in farmland at the edge of Memsie village, three and a half miles south of Fraserburgh: a massive, well-preserved burial cairn built about 4,000 years ago, some 25 metres across and 4.5 metres high. It is the only survivor of three large cairns recorded here in 1723, about 100 metres apart, with many smaller cairns around them; by 1799 great quantities of stone had been taken from the other two, probably for field walls. Finds from the cairns since the 1700s include human bones and burnt stones, a flint arrowhead and a flint block in a stone cist, a beaker and a Bronze Age sword, and an iron sword with a medieval pot, suggesting burials here on and off from the 2000s BC into the Middle Ages. Reviewers say it is easy to find and well kept, though in the end a great pile of stones with little information on site. Parking is only at the roadside of the B9032.