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Site of cave, set in the face of slope, found in 1847 during earthmoving operations. At a 'low level' part of a human skull and pottery sherds ornamented with small cord impressions, one from a pot with diameter circa 25 cm and the other 18 cm, were found, whilst a higher layer contained animal bones including deer and badger and shells . No trace of cave now as it has been buried by a cliff fall. In Adam Corrie's 1874 account he relates the following: 'In the year 1847 a cave near Montrose, at Lower Warburton, in the parish of St Cyrus, Kincardineshire, was examined by Mr Alexander Bryson. Its entrance is described by him as facing due south, situate about half-a-mile from the estuary of the Esk, and about 15 feet above high-water mark. Its mouth was filled up with soil, containing bones of ox, deer, badger, hare, rabbit, and other small rodents, beside a few bird-bones. At the mouth, or lowest part of the cave, the bones belonged chiefly to the larger ruminants, but at a height of 3 feet were found remains of small rodents. Above this came a mass of earth, about 10 feet thick, showing signs of stratification, through this mass skulls of rats and other small rodents were mixed promiscuously, but the scapulae and lighter bones were aggregated into heaps, so that a spadeful of them might have been taken up without any earth at all. Beyond these remains, an inner chamber was reached, the floor of which was covered by an unctuous slime, full of buccinum, mytilus, and patella, but a vertebra of an ox, and an amulet made from the leg of an ox, were the only osseous remains. This cave was next described by Mr W. Beattie. His account differs but little from the preceding one, excepting that he mentions the presence of wild cat, and also of a species which he states is either fox, wolf, or dog. His most important discovery, however, was a portion of a human parietal bone, and two other small pieces of human bones. The bones which he obtained were stated by Professor Owen to belong only to existing species. In the year 1865 a paper on this cave was written by Dr Howden, and read by Dr M‘Bain, in the same year before the Royal Physical Society in Edinburgh. Dr Howden seems never to have penetrated into the cave, for he says 'This cave, ever since I knew it, has been completely closed up by a large mass of rock several tons in weight, but around the entrance the soil still abounds in fragments of bones, shells, wood-ashes.' He, however, gives a list of the remains preserved in the Montrose Museum by Mr W. Beattie, which are as follows: Shells, Hytilus edulis, Cardium edule, Littorina littorea, Buccinam undatum, Fusus antiquus, Patella vulgata, Helix nemoralis, fragments of the claws of Cancer pagurus, leg-bones and bill of Sula bassana, their frequency, considering that the gannet is said by Dr Howden to visit the district only in the summer, is a fact rightly insisted on by him as being noteworthy. Bones of the following animals, Cervus elaphus, C. capreolus, Sus, Bos, Fells catus, Canis familiaris, Mus, Hypudeus, a portion of a human radius and parietal bone. Some coarse pottery, ornamented with cord-like pattern, was found, together with flat, round, and oval stones. Dr Howden, however, unlike Mr Bryson, who ascribed the presence of the remains in the cave to fluviatile action, and Mr Beattie, who thought it due to the agency of hyaenas, was the first to recognise the fact that the cave had been a place of human habitation.'
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Historic Environment Records (HER)