Lochearnhead

The first evidence of people in Lochearnhead comes from Mesolithic arrowheads found in Glen Ogle by former local policeman Tom Gibbon, and his son Donald. A settled population is in evidence in the Neolithic period, from a burial chamber at Edinchip, and from the cup-marked stones which lie between the Kendrum Burn and the Craggan Road, in what is known locally as the Druid Field. There is another site with cup and ring marks at the head of Glen Ogle. There are two crannogs still visible on Loch Earn, one at the west end of the loch in Carstran Bay, below Edinample Castle, the other at the east end of the loch, at St Fillans, known as Neish Island. (Other submerged possible crannog sites…

Loch Earn was on the frontier between Pictland and Dalriada, or Dál Riata. Dundurn at the east end of the loch being a Pictish frontier fort. This lends weight to the argument that the name Earn therefore comes from Eireann, in other words "the loch of the Irish". The siege, by the Scots, of the Pictish Fort of Dundurn in 683 AD is mentioned in the Annals of Ulster. Giric, (sometimes called Grig), King of Picts and Scots, is said to have been killed at Dundurn in 889, and is buried in Iona.