Skara Brae

5,000-year-old Neolithic village preserved by sand on the Bay of Skaill

The most astonishing prehistoric site in Britain. Skara Brae is a complete Neolithic village of stone houses, inhabited between roughly 3180 BCE and 2500 BCE, exposed by a storm in 1850 and now protected as part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. The houses are linked by covered passages and each one contains its original stone furniture — a central hearth, stone box beds, a dresser against the back wall, small tanks set into the floor that may have held shellfish.

The visitor centre includes a full-scale reconstruction of one of the houses, which gives a vivid sense of how it might have felt to live there. Then you walk down to the village itself, set into the dunes above a perfect sandy beach. Allow two hours. The combined ticket includes Skaill House next door. Book ahead in summer.

things to do sight
A story
Skara Brae was buried for thousands of years until a great storm in 1850 stripped the sand from the dunes above the Bay of Skaill and exposed the walls of the village. The site is now older than the Pyramids and Stonehenge — and so well preserved that the original stone furniture, including beds and dressers, is still in place.