Callanish II (Cnoc Ceann a' Gharaidh)

The Second Circle on the Ridge

A little over a kilometre south-southeast of the great cruciform monument at Callanish I, on a low knoll called Cnoc Ceann a'Gharaidh ("the hill at the end of the wall"), stands a smaller stone circle that is easily overlooked by visitors focused on its famous neighbour. This is Callanish II -- five surviving stones in a rough ellipse, standing on a hillock with wide views across Loch Roag and the Lewis landscape. It is quieter, less visited, and more exposed than the main Callanish site, and it has its own distinct character.

Callanish II is one of at least thirteen identified stone settings in the Callanish area, the second largest and most significant after the main monument. Together with Callanish III (Cnoc Fhillibhir Bheag), it forms part of a triangle of intervisible sites that once constituted a ceremonial landscape of considerable complexity.

The Monument

The surviving monument consists of five standing stones arranged in an approximate ellipse, measuring roughly 21 metres by 18 metres on its long and short axes. The stones are of Lewisian gneiss -- the same ancient metamorphic rock used at Callanish I -- and they range in height from about 1.2 metres to approximately 2.4 metres.

The five surviving stones are not evenly distributed around the ellipse. There are clear gaps where additional stones once stood, and antiquarian accounts from the 18th and 19th centuries suggest that more stones were visible in earlier periods. Estimates of the original complement range from eight to ten or more. Some may have been removed for building material, incorporated into field walls, or simply lost beneath the accumulating peat that has been the fate of so many Lewis monuments.

The stones are smaller and less dramatic than those of Callanish I -- none approaches the 4.75-metre height of the central monolith at the main site. But they are substantial, carefully selected slabs of gneiss, set upright with their flat faces oriented inward toward the centre of the ellipse. They have the same thin, blade-like profile that characterises the Callanish I stones, appearing broad from one angle and almost invisible from another.

The Setting: Cnoc Ceann a'Gharaidh

The knoll on which Callanish II stands is a key part of the monument's character. It is a natural eminence, rising gently from the surrounding peat moorland, and it commands views in almost every direction. To the north-northwest, the stones of Callanish I are visible on their ridge above Loch Roag. To the south, the landscape opens toward Callanish III and the other satellite sites. To the west, the waters of Loch Roag and the Atlantic beyond.

This intervisibility is almost certainly deliberate. The builders of the Callanish monuments positioned their stone settings on prominent points in the landscape, creating a network of related sites that could be seen from one another. Whether this network functioned as a unified ceremonial system -- with different sites used for different purposes or at different times in the ritual calendar -- or whether the sites were built by different communities who shared a common tradition, is not known.

The knoll's prominence also means that Callanish II is more exposed to the Lewis weather than the relatively sheltered ridge of Callanish I. On a windy day (which is most days on Lewis), the stones stand in the full force of the Atlantic gales, and the experience of visiting can be bracing. This exposure may itself have been significant: a place set apart, open to the sky and the wind, with no shelter and no concealment.

Date and Construction

Callanish II has not been the subject of a major modern excavation, and direct dating evidence is limited. By analogy with Callanish I and other stone circles on Lewis, it is assigned to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, probably erected around 2900--2500 BCE or slightly later.

The site was investigated briefly by Patrick Ashmore during his wider survey of the Callanish complex in the 1980s, and surface features have been mapped and recorded by various survey projects. These investigations have confirmed the elliptical form of the monument and identified probable socket holes for missing stones, but no substantial excavation of the interior has been carried out.

It is possible that Callanish II, like Callanish I, contained internal features -- a cairn, a cist, or a central setting -- that have been obscured by peat accumulation or removed by later activity. The peat cover on Lewis has both preserved and concealed prehistoric monuments, and future investigation may reveal features that are currently invisible.

Relationship to Callanish I and the Wider Landscape

The relationship between Callanish II and the main Callanish monument is one of the most intriguing questions in Lewis prehistory. The two sites are close enough to be intervisible -- separated by about 1.3 kilometres -- but far enough apart to be distinct locations requiring a deliberate walk between them.

Several interpretative possibilities have been proposed:

• Satellite function: Callanish II may have served as a secondary ceremonial site, subordinate to the main monument but linked to it in function. Processions or rituals may have moved between the sites.
• Community monument: Different communities or kin groups in the Callanish area may have built their own stone circles, sharing a common architectural tradition but maintaining distinct ritual spaces.
• Astronomical complement: The different positions of the satellite circles on the landscape may have provided different horizon views, allowing observations of different astronomical events. From Callanish II, the horizon profile to the south is different from that seen at Callanish I, which could have provided supplementary observations of lunar or solar phenomena.
• Chronological sequence: The satellites may post-date or pre-date Callanish I, representing different phases in the development of the ceremonial landscape.

None of these possibilities can be confirmed or excluded with current evidence. What is clear is that the Callanish landscape, like the great ceremonial landscapes of Orkney, Wessex, and the Boyne valley, was not a single monument but a network of related sites built and used over many centuries.

Visiting Callanish II

Callanish II is freely accessible at all times and requires no admission fee. It is reached on foot from the road, across open moorland.

The walk to Callanish II is across rough, often waterlogged moorland. There is no formal path for most of the route, and the ground can be deeply boggy, particularly after rain (which is frequent on Lewis). Good waterproof boots are essential, and in winter the moor can be very exposed. The reward for the effort is solitude: where Callanish I often has a steady stream of visitors, Callanish II may be entirely empty.

Five Stones on a Hilltop

There is something clarifying about visiting a monument that has been reduced to its essentials. Callanish I, with its avenues and cairn and fifty stones, is a complex, multi-phase monument that invites interpretation and analysis. Callanish II, with its five stones on a windy knoll, offers something simpler: the experience of standing in a place that was chosen and marked, four or five thousand years ago, by people who carried heavy stones to a hilltop and set them upright.

The five stones do not explain themselves. They do not align with obvious astronomical events. They do not contain visible burials. They do not form a dramatic silhouette against the sky. They simply stand, as they have stood for millennia, in a ring on a hill above the loch, in the wind and the rain and the enormous Lewis light.

That may be enough. Not every monument needs to yield its secrets to be meaningful. Sometimes the act of marking a place -- of saying "here, this spot, this hill" -- is the meaning. Callanish II is a place that was chosen. The choice endures in the stones.

On These Trails