Breckon Description of stone
Date 28 September 2016
Event ID 1014287
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1014287
Breckon, Eshaness, Shetland, portable altar slab fragment
Measurements: H 120mm, W 115mm
Stone type:
Place of discovery: HU 2117 7787
Present location: Shetland Museum (SM ARC 2013.79)
Evidence for discovery: found in 2012 by Les Smith on a ruined farmstead some 100m south of Crosskirk. This information from the finder corrects Scott and Ritchie (2014, 193, 200), where it is stated that the slab came from the graveyard.
Present condition: broken along two edges, one of which may have been deliberately trimmed.
Description
This small slab is incised on one broad face with an equal-armed cross with bars across the arms (crosslets). The cross is not quite central to the slab as it survives, and this, together with the fact that only two edges are intact, suggests that this fragment is the top left-hand corner of an altar slab, which probably bore a cross in each corner and in the centre. It seems likely that the stone came originally from the nearby site of Crosskirk, a twelfth-century foundation.
Date: twelfth century or earlier.
References: Scott & Ritchie 2014, 193, 196, 200.
Compiled by A Ritchie 2016
