Monument record 2492 - DUN BHARPA, BORVE, BARRA

NF60SE 5 6718 0190.

(NF 6718 0190) Dun Bharpa (NR)
OS 6" map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1904)

Dun Bharpa is a relatively little disturbed chambered cairn about 17ft high and 110ft in diameter. There is a peristalith of unevenly spaced, large, split stones of 80 to 85ft in diameter. The chamber lies to the east of the centre of the cairn with the entrance on the east side.
A smaller cairn, a little to the south-east, is noted by MacRitchie (? NF60SE 12).
A S Henshall 1963, visited 17 April 1962; RCAHMS 1928, visited 5 June 1915; D MacRitchie 1895.

As described above. The large relatively flat top of the cairn is honeycombed with at least sixteen circular and four oval and rectangular hollows varying in size from 1.5m in diameter to 3.6m by 1.5m, probably shielings.
Surveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (W D J) 26 May 1965.

B1 (NF672019) Dun Bharpa, chambered cairn. The cairn is c. 30 m in diameter and is still 5 m high, although stones have clearly been removed from the top exposing one of the huge cover slabs of the burial chamber. The tops of megaliths forming the passage can be seen protruding through the cairn to the east. Set within the periphery of the cairn are a series of upright stones, the largest of them apparently 3-4 m in height, and around a metre in width. Fifteen such stones survive, mostly around the western side, but whether there were once more and, if so, how many, is uncertain.
Branigan and Foster 2000, 27

D MacRitchie, 1895, Reliquary Illust Archaeol, 204 (Bibliographic reference). SWE12890.

RCAHMS, 1928, The RCAHMCS 9th Report & Inventory: Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles, 135, No. 457 (Bibliographic reference). SWE5587.

R W Feachem, 1963b, A Guide to Prehistoric Scotland, 41 (Bibliographic reference). SWE2141.

A. Henshall, 1972a, The Chambered Tombs of Scotland, 34-5, 513, UST 15 plan, 513 (Bibliographic reference). SWE3275.

J N G and M Ritchie and Harman, 1985, Exploring Scotland's Heritage: Argyll and the Western Isles, 151, no. 88 (Bibliographic reference). SWE6206.