Three standing stones and a fourth, fallen one lean at the edge of a cliff on Great Bernera in an arc rather than a circle, the only monument of its kind known in Britain. A 2010 study argued the arrangement lines up on the sunrises of Beltane and Lammas, old Gaelic festivals marking early May and the start of harvest. The island has been joined to Lewis by a bridge since 1953, built after islanders spent years campaigning for one; the crossing was rebuilt in 2021 and remains the only road onto Bernera.
At Bosta, a sheltered beach on the north side, a reconstructed Iron Age house stands on the site of a settlement uncovered by a storm in 1992 and occupied from around the 6th to 9th centuries AD. The rebuilt house, based on the original’s stone walls, is open to visitors in summer. Around 200 people live on Great Bernera, reached by a single-track road the whole way from the bridge to the beach car park at the end.
