Evanton

Landscape and setting

Evanton stands on the low ground north of the Cromarty Firth, between the coast, farmland and the wooded lower slopes below Ben Wyvis. This Place is drawn broadly around the village, the old Kiltearn parish group and the immediately associated edge of Novar. Foulis, Dingwall and Alness remain separate places.

A planned village and parish landscape

The village was laid out around 1800, replacing the earlier settlement of Drummond. Its former Secession chapel terminates the main street and later served as a school and meeting place. South of the village, the roofless old parish church, burial ground and former manse outbuildings preserve an older focus beside the firth.

Novar and deeper time

North and east of Evanton, Novar House, its gates and converted stables show how a long-established estate shaped roads, employment and designed landscape. Carn Liath adds a much earlier layer: a Neolithic chambered cairn on higher ground west of the village.

Explore responsibly

Many buildings are private homes or working-estate structures, and archaeological ground can be fragile. Use public roads and paths, follow current local guidance, respect burials and worship history, and do not enter estate drives, buildings, fields or monuments without permission. A map marker is a catalogue point rather than an access instruction.

Context sources

Heritage records

Explore Evanton on the map

Every teal SA marker is a reviewed Scotland’s Architecture record. A small A, B, C or SM badge records its designation without turning it into a live HES marker. Optional map layers add separate official HES listed buildings and scheduled monuments, nearby Wikipedia articles, NLS historical mapping, walking notes and device location. Nearby SA markers are grouped at wider views. Skip the map and browse the A–Z record list.

Marker key: reviewed Scotland’s Architecture record small badge = designationHES, SM and W markers belong to the optional live layers
Map layers:SA records: 10HES listed: offScheduled monuments: offWikipedia: off

Use the + and − controls at the map’s upper-left to change scale. They work with both the modern and historical maps.

Showing 10 mapped records. Locations are approximate catalogue points.

Map information, accuracy and rights

Locations are approximate catalogue points, not property boundaries or route guidance. Showing your location is optional: the site uses it only in this page and does not save it. Nearby distances are straight-line estimates. Current-use notes do not establish opening, access, ownership or route safety. Modern map tiles are supplied by OpenStreetMap. The optional historical overlay is the Ordnance Survey six-inch first edition for Scotland, principally surveyed in the 1840s–1880s, supplied by the National Library of Scotland. Sheet dates and coverage vary, and the historical map must not be read as current geography.

Marker links open the exact coordinates in Google Maps satellite view; they do not automatically select a panorama and do not require a paid Street View integration. On desktop, drag Pegman onto a blue road. On mobile, turn on the Street View layer and tap a blue road. Other photo markers may be user-contributed. The optional listed-buildings layer appears from city and large-town scale (zoom 12), clusters nearby designations, and links to official HES records. Lettered markers show the authoritative HES listing categories A, B and C. The separate scheduled-monuments layer appears from regional scale (zoom 10), uses purple SM markers at approximate designation centres, and links to official HES records for the full statutory boundary. It is independent of the listed-building category filter. Purple SM markers already attached to Scotland’s Architecture records remain curated catalogue markers. The separate, opt-in Wikipedia layer shows geotagged English Wikipedia articles in the current close map view. W markers are supplied independently by Wikipedia, may cover subjects beyond architecture, and are not affected by HES filters. Turning it on sends the visible map centre and approximate radius to Wikimedia; Scotland’s Architecture does not save that request. Plan a heritage walk loads a Place-wide inventory independently of the current zoom, suggests a Category A-led order of principal stops, and divides longer itineraries into Google Maps legs. It uses no paid Google integration and does not reproduce Google route geometry. The site map deliberately shows numbered stops without a connecting line; Google supplies the live pedestrian streets, paths, distance and time. Optional Category B and C candidates are selected only by proximity to a principal landmark marker and are not assumed to lie on Google’s route. Printable notes retain complete active URLs. This is a discovery aid rather than a statutory property-boundary search. For additional historic-map comparison and wider archaeological layers, visit PastMap; check current designation status and full legal extent in the linked official HES record.

Historical map: Ordnance Survey six-inch first edition, Scotland, 1843–1882, National Library of Scotland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Listed-building and scheduled-monument data contains Historic Environment Scotland and OS data © Historic Environment Scotland and Crown Copyright and database right 2026, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Wikipedia article titles, coordinates and links are supplied by Wikipedia contributors.

Carn Liath Chambered Cairn

A broad stone mound west of Evanton preserves the chamber of a Neolithic communal tomb beneath later disturbance and field clearance.

Former Secession Chapel, Chapel Street

A tall former Secession meeting house closes the view along Evanton’s main street, its bellcote preserving the planned village’s strongest architectural accent.

Kiltearn Former Manse Barn

A long field barn preserves the winnowing doors and slit vents of the working landscape around Kiltearn’s former manse.

Kiltearn Former Manse Steading

A modest former stable and byre shows how the working buildings of Kiltearn manse were retained through careful residential conversion.

Newton of Novar

A compact harled house at Evanton’s Novar edge combines an early nineteenth-century symmetrical core with later bay-window and entrance changes.

Novar House and Walled Gardens

Novar House gathers three centuries of change around a 1720 core, with courts, gardens and later wings expressing the scale of the estate beside Evanton.

Novar House East Entrance Gates

Ball-finialled gatepiers and iron gates form a formal threshold between Evanton’s roads and the designed landscape of Novar.

Novar Stables

Two parallel stable ranges and their gated court retain the working geometry of Novar even after conversion to accommodation.