I’m in a remote farm in the Orkneys on a little hillock called Mine Howe. For years there have been stories around here of tunnels under the roads and mysterious underground rooms, which have never been satisfactorily explained until about six months ago when an extraordinary discovery was made. Acting on stories of a lost secret chamber first found in 1946, a local farmer and his friends set out to rediscover it. What they found was extraordinary. A set of stairs made of stone, disappearing into the earth and leading to a dark and secret chamber.

A set of stairs leading into a hillock’s unique. And now the whole archaeological world is agog, everyone wants to know who built it and when and what it was put there for.