To the Ancient Scotland Introduction...

Cairn Table

The path up Cairn Table. At the top of the path is the pyramidal modern war monument. Immediately to its left are the remains of one prehistoric cairn. Left and behind is the second, largely intact, prehistoric cairn.
Large Image (56kb 835x552)

View from the cairns out towards Grindstone Rig.
Large Image (62kb 536x829)

The modern monument made from cairn material.
Large Image (59kb 801x544)

The well preserved cairn.
Large Image (54kb 801x552)

An abandoned, almost finished, mill stone on Grindstone Rig.
Large Image (98kb 793x544)

Cairn Table is a hill just south of Muirkirk.
On the summit are two large cairns; one is largely intact, but the other was heavily robbed of stone to build a large monument to the people of Muirkirk who fought in the 1914-1918 war.
The intact cairn stands a little more than ten feet tall.
People have been present in the area since the early days of the occupation of Scotland. Nearby are sites where agate stones can be found and these were worked into stone tools during the mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) period and assorted scrapers and cutters and other simple stone tools have been found in the area.
In more recent centuries, the local stone was used to make millstones - abandoned partly-worked millstones can still be found on the hillside between Cairn Table and Grindstone Rig.