Note
Date 1990
Event ID 1107064
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1107064
The sculptured stones displayed in Meigle Museum, the former school-house of the village, form one of the most important collections of Pictish sculpture in Eastern Scotland; all were found in or near the parish church of Meigle (NO24SE 33.00). Before being placed in the museum at the end of the nineteenth century, several stood in the burial-ground, although it is not certain that they were, even then, in their original positions. Several others stood in a group on a mound a little to the N of the church, a location that caused some antiquarian speculation (for which, see NO24SE 33.00). Some were built into the walls of the church and the burial-ground, several being broken up to form manageable building-blocks in the process. The church was, however, destroyed by fire in 1869; some sculptured stones were discovered in the course of salvage and rebuilding operations, but others appear to have been lost in the conflagration. In 1858 a malt-kiln at Templehall (NO 2874 4467), a property some 70m N of the church, was demolished, and carved stones were found to have been employed in the construction of the kiln. The assemblage caught the attention of antiquaries such as Pennant, and the stones were subsequently studied in detail by Chalmers and Stuart; in several cases, their illustrations form the only record of stones that have subsequently been lost or destroyed. The major catalogue of Early Christian monuments in Scotland, that published by Allen and Anderson in 1903, lists the stones in two groups, Class II and Class III; the catalogue numbers allotted by Allen and Anderson are followed in this account. The monuments are all of sandstone, the majority of Old Red Sandstone, but detailed petrological definition is not possible without thin-sectioning. Most of the carving is in low relief, often within a raised border or frame, and comments on technique are reserved for the use of incision or unusually high relief.
Information from RCAHMS (JNGR) 1990.
T Pennant 1776; P Chalmers 1948; J Stuart 1856; J Stuart 1867; J R Allen and J Anderson 1903.
