Southdean Church And Kirkyard

Southdean, portable altar/altar seal

Measurements: L 0.24m, W 0.19m, D 0.03m

Stone type: fine-grained sandstone.

Place of discovery: NT 6314 0916

Evidence for discovery: found during excavations of the ruined church in 1910, exact provenance unknown. The church stood beside the Jed Water. The slab was later taken to the modern parish church.

Present location: set into the communion table, protected by glass, in Southdean Parish Church at Chesters (Canmore 268006).

Present condition: good, apart from some damage along the left-hand edge.

Description:

This small rectangular slab is firmly incised with five small equal-armed crosses, one in the middle and one in each corner. The two right-hand crosses are set as saltires, while the other three are upright. More lightly incised is a rough pedestal that has been added to the foot of the central cross. On the grounds that the chancel is thought to be a fifteenth-century rebuild of an original thirteenth-century chancel, the slab has been dated to the fifteenth century and interpreted as an altar seal, but the excavation revealed an earlier building beneath the thirteenth-century nave, and the slab is likely to be of much earlier date.

Date: possibly early medieval.

Primary references: Eeles 1911, 559-61; RCAHMS 1956, no 928; Thomas 1971, 197.

Site visit and entry compiled by A Ritchie 2019.

NT60NW 10 63141 09164

For (successor) Chesters Church (NT 6263 1070), see NT61SW 11.00.

(NT 6313 0916) Southdean Church (NR) (In Ruins)

OS 6" map, (1924).

The roof of 'Zedon', 'Souden', or Southdean Church collapsed in 1688. In 1910, the site, then merely a large shapeless mound, was excavated by Hawick Archaeological Society. The outline of the church (see RCAHMS 1956 plan) was recovered while foundations of an obviously earlier church were exposed 5' outside the N wall of its nave. The early foundations were fragmentary, but enough was left of the later building to show that it was unaisled and that it included a central W tower, a nave and a chancel. The E side of the tower was still 6' high, but its outer sides had been reduced to the lowest courses; the nave walls were standing from 2'6" - 3' high, but those of the chancel stood only two courses above the foundations on the N and E while little more than the bare foundations were left on the S. The masonry generally was rubble, roughly squared and built to courses. When excavation was complete, the Society made the remains secure and raised the tower sufficiently to be roofed in, thus forming a shelter for some fragments of carved detail which had been unearthed. Tower and nave are of one date and probably belong to the 13th C, while the chancel is an addition of about the mid-15th C, replacing an earlier chancel. The two most important relics found during the excavations were the super-altar and the font. The former is probably of late 15th C date; it has been inserted in the communion table of the modern parish church. The font is preserved in the base of the tower of this church.

RCAHMS 1956, visited 1931 and 1945; F C Eeles 1911.

(NT 6313 0916) Church (NR) (rems of)

OS 6" map, (1964).

The remains of this church are as described and planned. Although the name 'Souden Kirk' appears above the entrance to the tower, it could not be confirmed whether this or 'Southdean Church' is the correct name. 'Southdean' is locally pronounced 'Sooden'. Parallel to the N wall of the nave and at its W end can be seen the slight footings of a wall of the earlier church.

Visited by OS (EGC) 3 March 1967

Minor excavations were carried out at the spots indicated by Hawick Archaeological Society in 1967. One excavation was to check what was thought to be the site of a well, but this proved to be merely a natural hollow. Bones were uncovered by the section in the chancel.

Trans Hawick Archaeol Soc 1967.

No change to previous information.

Visited by OS (BS) 21 September 1976.