St Boniface Description of stone
Event ID 1017206
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017206
St Boniface Church 1, Papa Westray, Orkney, cross-slab fragment
Measurements: H 0.57m+, W 0.32m, D 0.04m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: HY c 4881 5271
Present location: National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh (X.IB.200).
Evidence for discovery: found at a depth of almost a metre during grave-digging in the graveyard north of St Boniface Church in 1920 (part of it was left in the ground) and retrieved by William Kirkness who sent it to the museum in Edinburgh.
Present condition: the left-hand edge is damaged and the top right-hand corner is missing, as is the base, and small areas of carving have been lost.
Description
One broad face of this slab is incised, towards the top of the slab, with a compass-drawn cross-of-arcs surmounted by a linear cross with crescent terminals and a rectangular base. The terminal of the upper arm is missing, along with two short sections of the circle enclosing the cross-of-arcs.
Date: seventh or eighth century.
References: Kirkness 1921, 134; Fisher 2002, 49; Scott & Ritchie 2014, no 22.
Compiled by A Ritchie 2017
