Huly Hill is in fact, not a hill at all, but a burial cairn approximately 100 feet in diameter and 10.5 feet high, surrounded by the remains of a stone circle, just next to the M8/M9/A89 roundabout at Newbridge, between the River Almond and the Western tip of Edinburgh Airport. The circle now consists of three standing stones and an Eastern outlier, pointing roughly in the direction of Castle Hill and Arthur's Seat in central Edinburgh, and lines up in that direction with Cairnpapple in West Lothian.
Plan of Huly Hill & Eastern Outlier (Drawn To Scale)
Theories differ as to whether there were originally more stones in the circle, and, indeed, whether the extant stones in fact represent the remains of two concentric circles, centred on the cairn itself (see Coles 1903 below).
The Burial Cairn at Huly Hill
Until recently, the site was overgrown and largely ignored, but has now been cleared, with a circular path joining the stones, and the cairn has been rimmed by a modern wall. Click here for a location map provided by StreetMap. Click here for an arial photograph provided by Multimap.
The name Huly Hill is Scots for Gentle Hill, although local children like to scare each other with gruesome stories of black witchcraft and devil-worship occurring on the summit of the cairn to this day. However, an older name for the site was Heelie Hill, heelie being a variant of huly. An older name for Newbridge itself was Old Liston.
Following the rough plan given above, the following is the Eastern circle stone, the smallest of the three. This stone has heavy weathering on its Northern side and top, strongly suggesting that it was originally wider and taller.
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The Eastern Circle Stone, Huly Hill |
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Running clockwise around the circle, we come to the South-west stone, the largest of the three within the circle. This stone is in excellent condition and is probably in its original state.
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The South-western Circle Stone, Huly Hill |
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Continuing clockwise, we come to the North-western circle stone, the medium-sized of the three and, on the day that this photo was taken, bearing contemporary rock-art by a local "artist" called Dode!
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The North-western Circle Stone, Huly Hill |
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Finally, we come to the Eastern outlier, now on the opposite side of the M8/M9/A89 roundabout, and within the grounds of an industrial estate, immediately on the South side of the A89. This stone is by far the largest of the four:
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The Eastern Outlier, Huly Hill
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In March 2001, in the middle of a new industrial building site (now the Edinburgh Interchange development) on the Southern side of Huly Hill, a rare Celtic chariot has been discovered, and, at time of writing, is in the process of being excavated and moved to the NMS for further research:
Site of the Newbridge Chariot excavation, March 2001
The chariot is thought to be connected with a burial, and to date from around 250BC. Apparently, the chariot is complete and in good condition, and of a type previously unknown in Scotland, rare in Southern Britain, normally associated with Continental finds. Most other British examples are from the area of East Yorkshire settled by the Gaulish Parisii, but there, the chariots were dismantled before being interred. The Newbridge find is therefore of major national and international significance.
We hope to include photos and further information on this find in the near future. For a report from the BBC news service, click here.
Huly Hill was vaguely excavated in 1830 and finds included a bronze spearhead (or dagger), burnt animal remains, and small bone fragments. According to Joseph Anderson, writing in 1878, there is some dispute concerning the nature of these finds:
"In his chapter on Sepulchral Memorials in the 'Prehistoric Annals of Scotland,' Dr. Daniel Wilson refers to the opening in 1830 of a large encircled barrow at Old Liston, within a few miles of Edinburgh, and states that a bronze spear-head was found alone with a heap of animal charcoal and small fragments of bones, but neither cist nor urn. The dimensions of the barrow or cairn are not given, and the size and number of the standing stones by which it is encircled are not indicated. We are indebted to Dr. John Alexander Smith, however, for the information that the base of the tumulus is about 31 yards in diameter, that three of the standing stones still retain their position, and that one about 8 feet hight stands to the north-west of the mound, another about 7 feet hight to the south-west, and the third to the east- size not specified. The so-called spear-head, I presume, was one of those daggers with rivets which, at the time when Dr. Wilson wrote, were almost universally classed as spear-heads. There is no authenticated instance of a bronze spear-head having been found with an interment in Scotland; while these daggers are invariably so found."
- Joseph Anderson, 'Burial in Cairns Encircled by Standing Stones' in "Notes on the Character and Contents of a Large Sepulchral Cairn of the Bronze Age at Collessie, Fife", in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Vol.12, pt.2, 1878, pp.449-50.
In 1903, Fred Coles provided the following description, along with the two sketches included below:
"Having in May 1899 made a survey of the whole site, I am able to present the following notice and ground-plans.
The Heelie Hill, as this cairn is locally called, can easily be reached by taking the first turn to the left after quitting the train at Ratho station on its north side. As one walks westwards, the first object to arrest the eye of the antiquary is a great monolith, over 9 feet in height, in a field close to Lochend farm. This I call Lochend Stone, and its ground-plan is shown on fig.9, with the direction of its flattest side at the base. The other three separate ground-plans are those of the three standing stones near the cairn, named A, B and C on the ground plan of the cairn (fig.10). To these also are appended their heights, and the compass-direction of one side at the base, to scale.
The general ground-plan gives the cairn and three stones on a necessarily small scale, one hundred feet to an inch. On examining it, the first thing to strike one is the apparent chance-work of the setting of the standing stones; for it is clear that the stones A, B and C are not set up on the circumference of a circle concentric with the base of the cairn, because C is set on an imaginary circle whose radius is equal to the diameter of the cairn, and A and B are set on one whose radius is twice that diameter. In other words, if the cairn ever was completely surrounded by a circular setting of standing stones concentric with itself, this setting must have been double; that is, on the assumption that these three stones are remnants of the original setting, left in their original positions. It is certainly also remarkable that the stone C is almost precisely to the N.E. of B and to the N.W. of A, and that the base of this triangle, the space between A and B, is precisely 318 feet, thrice the diameter of the mound.
The cairn, grass-grown all over, is about 15 feet in its central height, and 96 feet in diameter within the encircling low wall. It is a little irregular and rough in certain parts of its summit, but certainly betrays no evidence of anything like an exhaustive excavation."
- Fred R. Coles, 'Notices of (1) The Camp at Montgoldrum and other Antiquities in Kincardineshire; (2) A Stone Circle Called the Harestones in Peebleshire: (3) A Cairn and Standing Stones at Old Liston, and Other Standing Stones in Midlothian and Fife; (4) Some Hitherto Undescribed Cup and Ring-Marked Stones; and (5) Recent Discoveries of Urns.', in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Vol.37, 1903. pp.201-204.
Coles, Overall Plan of Huly Hill, 1903
Coles, Sketches of the Huly Hill Stones, 1903
According to the OS map of 1853, the area around Huly Hill marks the "Supposed Site of Battle Between the Armies of Malcolm II and Constantine the Usurper 995". In local lore, this battle accounts for many of the burial cists and monuments along the alleged extent of the battle-site, from Huly Hill to the Catstane. However, archaeologists now consider most of these types of sites to significantly predate the date of that battle, and, much like the lore surrounding the Gogar Stane to the East, such stories probably have little historical basis.
thanks to george shepherd (linlithgow) for generous permission to use his excellent photographs of the huly hill outlier