Meigle
Cross Slab (Pictish), Pictish Symbol Stone (Pictish)
Site Name Meigle
Classification Cross Slab (Pictish), Pictish Symbol Stone (Pictish)
Alternative Name(s) Meigle Museum; Meigle Stones; Meigle No. 7
Canmore ID 30867
Site Number NO24SE 25.07
NGR NO 2872 4459
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/30867
- Council Perth And Kinross
- Parish Meigle
- Former Region Tayside
- Former District Perth And Kinross
- Former County Perthshire
Meigle 7, Perthshire, Pictish cross-slab fragment
Measurements: H 0.50m, W 0.42m, D 0.07m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: NO 2873 4460
Present location: Meigle Museum.
Evidence for discovery: found in the ruins of the church after the fire of 1869.
Present condition: broken, with some edge damage.
Description
This fragment is the rounded top of a cross-slab, carved in relief on both broad faces. Within a plain flat-band moulding on face A are the three upper arms of a cross, itself outlined by a roll moulding. The terminals are rectangular and the armpits stepped, and the interior is filled with diagonal key pattern. The spaces between the arms and the edge moulding contain on the left a seated male figure, naked and bearded, clasping the cross, and on the right a fanged quadruped with its left front leg folded back against its body and a long pointed ear. Face C has no moulding but bears two symbols, a double disc and Z-rod and a double-sided comb, together with part of a third symbol (unidentifiable but not a mirror as ECMS suggests).
Date: ninth century.
References: ECMS pt 3, 302-3; RCAHMS 1994, 98, F; Fraser 2008, no 189.6.
Desk-based information compiled by A Ritchie 2018.
NO24SE 25.7 2872 4459.
The upper part of a cross-slab, found when the former parish church (NO24SE 33.00) was demolished, was probably broken for use as a building-stone. The round-headed fragment (0.5m by 0.42m and 0.07m thick) is decorated with a cross-potent infilled with key-pattern, with the figures of a crouching man and a beast in the upper angles. The back bears a double-disc and Z-rod symbol, with penannular motifs in the roundels, a comb and a further symbol, possibly part of a mirror. Information from RCAHMS (JNGR) 1990.
Publication Account (1964)
No. 7 Upper part of upright cross-slab. The head has key pattern; on either side, a crouching man and a dragon-like animal. On the back, the double-disc and Z-rod, part of a comb symbol (bottom left).
S Cruden 1964.
