Burnt Mound 200m SE of Sandhill Eday, Orkney Islands, Scotland, UK

Scheduled Monument Description

© Crown Copyright text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The monument comprises a burnt mound - a prehistoric cooking place, which may conceal traces of prehistoric domestic buildings. It is probably of Bronze Age date.

The mound is in a low-lying area, near to fresh water: this is a typical location. The mound is extremely well-preserved, standing over 2m tall. It takes the form of a crescentic bank, about 25m long by 6m wide, which curves partly around an oval bank of lower height. This latter is probably no more than a detached part of the same mound. The whole monument, about 20m by 25m overall, appears to stand on a slight platform.

The area to be scheduled is a circle of diameter 55m, to enclose the burnt mound and subsidiary mound, the platform on which they stand and an area around them in which evidence relating to their accumulation and period of use may survive, as marked in red on the accompanying map extract.