- Location: 2km east of Torphichen, West Lothian.
- Opening times: 1 April to 30 September 10.00am – 4.30pm. Closed the rest of the year.
- Entry: Adult £8.50, concession £6.80, child £5.00, various family prices. Note: These are walk-up prices; entry is slightly cheaper if booked in advance online.
- Access: Limited roadside parking.
Cairnpapple Hill’s first big plus-point is that it is a hill that can be conquered without (much) climbing, as local roads allow visitors to drive almost to the top. Once parked in the lay-by that takes about five cars, it is just a matter of going up a short flight of stairs and then a light and equally short incline.
A second plus-point is the terrific view; apparently the east and west coasts of Scotland can be seen on a clear day. I don’t have a clear day, as a bank of battleship grey clouds smudge the distant west, but the Campsie Fells are unmistakable in the north-west, as is Berwick Law in the north-east. Other obvious landmarks are the Lomond Hills north of the Forth River, the distinctive Irn Bru-coloured cantilevers of the mighty Forth Bridge, and the petrochemical plants of Grangemouth, futuristic and strangely beautiful in the dark but grim and primitive in daylight.
Good though they are, it isn’t the views that are Cairnpapple Hill’s biggest selling point, but its history. For four thousand years, from approximately 3,800 BCE to the early Christian era, this hill was used for funerary activity and perhaps other ritualistic purposes. Why this summit was singled out from the surrounding Bathgate Hills is unknown; perhaps like me they simply liked the view.
My first stop is to a more recent addition to the hill, a Nissan corrugated hut built as a communications base during the Second World War. This now serves as a Historic Scotland visitor centre, which is where I meet Cat, the site’s curator for today. Using a tabletop model as a visual aid, she provided a comprehensive overview of the twenty generations of activity here at Cairnpapple which greatly enhanced my understanding of the site. There are also a series of information boards in the visitor centre to supplement and expand upon the presentation.
An archaeological excavation in 1947 – 1948 revealed the following:
• Evidence of hearths during the Neolithic period. As these were at the top of a hill it is believed they were used for ritualistic or ceremonial purposes rather than just for light and heat. Some shattered pottery and fragments of two stone axes from that period were also found.
• An arc of seven pits, also from the Neolithic period. These contained the cremated remains of 13 people.
• The remains of a henge monument, i.e. a raised area encircled by a ditch on one side and a mound on the other. This dates from about 2500 – 2000 BCE.
• Evidence of a ring of either wooden or stone posts, dating from the same period but not necessarily constructed alongside the henge.
• The ‘North Grave’, an extravagant tomb presumably for a person of some importance. There was also evidence of other cist burials, i.e. the deceased were buried in what essentially looked like a stone coffin. They date from around 2000 BCE.
• Four graves from the early Christian period (about 400 – 1000 CE). Although no bones or grave goods were discovered in them these are believed to be Christian due to their east-west orientation.
If that wasn’t enough, three cairns were constructed over the centuries / millennia, each – if I am reading this right – bigger than and covering its predecessor. For such a small area it is a remarkably complex site, with colour-coding marking features from different time periods. I ended up going back to the visitor centre to pick up the guidebook just to make heads and tails of it all, and I am not 100% sure I succeeded!
Cairnpapple Hill doesn’t have the ‘wow factor’ that accompanies some of Britain’s more famous prehistoric sites, nor will it ever have mediocre rock bands gazing wistfully at it from the misty distance, but it has a fascinating history, even if we’ll never know why our ancestors picked this insignificant hill and decided to make it something quite remarkable.
Destination or Diversion?
It is complex but it is also small, so Cairnpapple Hill is no more than a diversion. Other brown signs that could be visited in the area include the Torphichen Preceptory (open weekends only, but one for the future for me), the Korean War Memorial, and Linlithgow Palace.
