Midhowe Chambered Cairn

Midhowe Chambered Cairn is the largest of the fifteen Neolithic tombs on Rousay, a stalled cairn 32.5 metres long sheltered inside a modern hangar on the shore of Eynhallow Sound, next to Midhowe Broch. Upright slabs divide its 23-metre chamber into twelve stalls, plain near the southern entrance and more elaborate towards the north, with low benches along one side, in a layout that echoes Neolithic houses such as the Knap of Howar. Excavators in the 1930s found nine bodies crouched in the stalls facing the centre, three skulls standing upright on a bench and the scattered bones of at least fifteen more people. Historic Scotland reads this as a tomb where the dead were left to decay and their bones were later rearranged by the living, until it was deliberately filled with stones. Visitors look down into the stalls from high-level walkways, as most of the ground level is closed. It is a steep walk of about 450 metres down through sheep pasture from the small car park.