Clava cairns of Aviemore

Three Clava cairns — Bronze Age chambered cairns of the type named from Balnuaran of Clava, each ringed by megaliths — stand in or close to Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands. All three were written up in 1906 by Caleb George Cash, an honorary fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and his account remains the common point of reference for their condition.

Delfour stone circle lies 4 miles, or 6.4 kilometres, south-west of Aviemore railway station and 2 miles north-north-east of Kincraig, and in 1906 stood near a cottage. Cash found it ruinous: as he described it, hardly recognisable as anything other than a heap of stones cleared by the farmer from his fields. The middle circle, about 60 feet or 18 metres across, appears to have been used as a clearance dump, with stones from the outer rings tipped into it. An outer kerb some 58 feet across encloses an inner ring of smaller stones, and a bank of small stones just outside the kerb belongs to the original design, though field stone has since been thrown onto it.

One stone at Delfour still stands, and Cash called it striking. It is a quartzite slab about 22 feet — 6.7 metres — south-west of the middle circle, 9 feet 6 inches high, 5 feet 6 inches wide and 1 foot 6 inches thick, and it may be the sole survivor of an outer ring. Because it tapers towards the top, Cash thought it resembled a cloaked human figure.

The Aviemore circle is made up of three rings, or what is left of them: an outer ring of detached megaliths about 75 feet or 23 metres across, a second of closely set graded kerbstones about 42 feet across, and an inner ring of about 26 feet. The cairn itself has almost entirely gone, leaving three or four slabs. Seven stones were still upright at the centre in 1877; by the time Aubrey Burl recorded the site in 2005 five remained, one of them fallen, the tallest standing 4 feet 11 inches. A housing estate has since grown up around it, and the circle now sits in the middle of it.

The Grenish circle stands a little over 2 miles east-north-east of Aviemore station and some 350 yards east of the road, on uneven moorland that once carried pine woods. A lochan beside it takes its name from the monument — Loch nan Carraigean, the loch of the standing stones. The Highland Railway's line to Carr Bridge, now the preserved Strathspey Railway, passes within a few yards of the outer circle on the west, and an old path from Aviemore to Boat of Garten runs equally close on the east. The three circles are recorded by the Highland Historic Environment Record as MGH 4428 for Delfour, MHG 3129 for Aviemore and MHG 4648 for Grenish.