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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

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