Heel-shaped cairn

The heel-shaped cairn, with its usually cruciform chamber, is a type of megalithic monument that is found in Scotland, especially in Caithness and Sutherland and in the Shetland Islands.

In Orkney, the Isbister Cairn is the only site that is similar in shape.

The chambers usually lie in a round cairn made of broken rocks, which either contemporaneously or later were surrounded by the eponymous platform, up to 20 metres wide at the front and from 1.0 to 1.5 metres high, and were partly enclosed by large kerbstones.

A gentle concave exedra is characteristic of the front face.

The best-known sites of this type in Shetland are: Gillaburn, Hill of Caldback, Hill of Dale, Mangaster, Muckle Heog, Pettigarth's Field, Punds Water, Turdale Water, Vementry, Viville Loch, Ward of Silwicks and Wind Hamars.