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Publication Account

Date 1995

Event ID 1016741

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016741

This great cross-slab, known as the Clach a' Charridh, is one of the most impressive of all Pictish monuments. It stands in its original position on a hill overlooking the little fishing village of Shandwick, and is a landmark which can be seen from far out to sea. The stone blew down in 1846 and broke in half, but it has been carefully restored. It is now covered by a glass conservatory to protect it from pollution, necessary but unsightly.

The stone stands 2.7m high. On the face which looks out to sea is a prominent cross formed of protruding bosses, which are covered with a complex relief pattern of interlocking spirals. Below each arm is a small angel with two pairs of wings, then a beast each side of the stem, and then two contrasting groups of interlaced creatures, animals with ribbon-like bodies on the left and snakes on the right. Below the cross is a damaged pattern of large low bosses surrounded by snakes' bodies meeting head to gead, and covered with a mesh of interlace.

The other side of the stone is divided into five panels and decorated in rather lower relief. At the top is a damaged double-disc symbol with spiral patterns on it, and below this a 'Pictish beast' symbol, its body left quite plain, but tiny animals squeezed in below. The next panel has a positive menagerie of people and animals, including men on horseback, a man with a drinking horn, a stag being hunted, two men with swords and small shields fighting, and a kneeling man shooting a crossbow at a stag. The fourth panel has a most beautiful circular composition of interlocking spirals. The fifth panel carried four patterns, but parts of only two can now be seen.

Long after the Pictish origin of the cross-slabs had been forgotten, a local; legend grew up around this stone and its neighbours at Nigg and Hilton. In brief, the story is that the stones were erected to mark the graves of three Norse princes who were wrecked on a reef off Shandwick Bay while pursuing the Earl of Ross, because the Earl had illtreated his wife, their sister, and banished her to Ballone Castle. The reef is called the King's Sons or the Three Kings.

Close to the stone is an ancient graveyard, now under the plough, used in recent centuries only for the burial of unbaptised children, and in 1832 for cholera victims.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).

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