Cider creator raises a glass to Pictish past
Ron and Judith Gillies. Pic: Stewart Attwood The owner of a Perthshire winery has discovered his site was built on top of a Pictish settlement, days after naming his new cider‘Pictish Cider’.
Ron Gillies of Cairn O’Mohr in Errol named the new cider after the Picts to reflect the drink’s Scottish origins, but did not realise how close those connections were until his former neighbour showed him documents confirming the winery’s ancient past.
The Perth Farmers’Market regular said: “I came up with the name and then I discovered that the Cairn O’Mohr winery sits on top of an ancient Pictish settlement.
“I’d always heard rumours about a protected monument under the ground but it was only after I named it that I found out more detail.
“It was quite an extensive site - a whole community lived over the top of the hill - and Cairn O’Mohr and East Inchmichael farm were built on it.
“There are some aerial photographs from before the winery existed and the foundations of Pictish buildings can be seen quite clearly - it looks like there has been around a dozen buildings.
“Half of it is across the road from us and that is the protected bit. I thought it was quite a coincidence.”
Ron explained the Cairn O’Mohr team often find signs of the Pictish settlement, but have no plans to dig it up.
He continued:“There are no plans to excavate it. There are a number of sites like that - where they’ve decided that they shouldn’t be disturbed, apart from agriculture.
“We find stuff all the time - my brother has a big collection on his farm.
“Years ago a stone Cist was found, which may have been a burial, and that was excavated.”
The Picts, whose name came from the Latin‘painted ones’, came from northern and eastern Scotland before 900AD, with much of ancient Pictland covering modern-day Perth and Kinross.