High Banks

High Banks is a rock outcrop about thirty metres long near Mutehill, south of Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway. It stands on farmland with views across the surrounding countryside. The site shows groups of cup marks and larger cup-and-ring carvings cut into the stone. The biggest ring is forty-five centimetres wide. Two burial mounds called High Banks Southern Cairn and High Banks Northern Cairn lie west of the farmhouse. The carvings date from the Neolithic and Bronze Age, showing how early people marked the landscape. Excavations in 1890 recorded the Northern Cairn as having a diameter of about fifteen metres and standing one point six five metres high. A pottery vessel was found in the Southern Cairn, which is mainly a turf-covered mound. Early records also mention a bowl-shaped stone at the site. Visitors walk across open fields to reach the outcrop and the cairns. The carvings are easiest to see in low morning or late afternoon light. The Northern Cairn still shows traces of its stone border. The Southern Cairn is lower and grass-grown, with the remains of the vessel kept nearby. The whole place offers quiet views over rolling farmland and distant hills.