St Magnus Description of stone
Event ID 1017215
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017215
St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, hogback gravestone fragment
Measurements: L 0.37, W 0.24m, H 0.18m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: HY 4494 1087
Present location: The Orkney Museum, Kirkwall
Evidence for discovery: found amongst builder’s rubble beneath the floor of the cathedral in 1913. It is likely to have come from the nearby graveyard of St Olaf’s Kirk, because the building of the cathedral began in the mid twelfth century.
Present condition: broken and worn.
Description
This fragment comes from the higher, presumably head, end of a gravestone with a plain rounded ridge and three rows of tegulae. The tegulae are rectangular with trimmed corners.
Date: eleventh century.
References: RCAHMS 1946, I, 47; Lang 1974, 227-8 (Kirkwall 1).
Compiled by A Ritchie 2017