Built some 4,000 years ago, Corrimony Cairn is a passage grave of the Clava type. Built by neolithic farmers, skilled in working stone, they were the first people to domesticate animals, till the land and clear the forests for farming, their society was cooperative.
Corrimony Chambered Cairn was built for collective burials, the beliefs of the builders remain unknown, it is believed these people existed from 3,500BC to 1,500Bc. Each group had their own collective tomb, built with the help of other groups in the area, with feasts and gifts being given to the helpers.
The astronomical alignment and orientation (the entrance passage is orientated towards the south west), has led people to suggest that the builders of Corrimony Chambered Cairn believed in the migration of the souls of the dead to the stars.
There is eveidence in some tombs that the bodies were prepared for the journey, with the bodies being dimembered, ceramic vessels shattered and animal bones indicate food offerings. Fires were then lit so the tomb acted as a crematorium.
Pieces of the original capstone, decorated with cup-mark designs, are still to be seen on top of the cairn. For a monument built four thousand years ago, Corrimony Chambered Cairnis remarkably well preserved, the best example in the region. Corrimony-cairn5.jpgIt was excavated in 1952, in the centre of the cairn there was only a dark stain visible evidence that any remains had deteriorated in the acid soil.
There are 12 standing stones surrounding Corrimony Cairn, is suspected that some of these may have been added since the building of the original cairn.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).