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St Nicholas Description of stone
Event ID 1017219
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017219
St Nicholas’ Chapel 1, Papa Stronsay, Orkney, portable cross-slab
Measurements: H 0.28m, W 0.07m
Stone type: ‘slatey’
Place of discovery: HY 6695 2918
Present location: lost.
Evidence for discovery: found buried ‘three or four feet deep’ in a graveyard close to St Nicholas’ Chapel around 1850 and taken to the Kirkwall town house of the Heddle family of Melsetter. P A Jastresbski drew the stone soon afterwards for John Stuart’s first volume of Sculptured Stones of Scotland (1856), and around the same time Sir Henry Dryden made a paper squeeze of it, which was used by Allen for the drawing published in ECMS in 1903 (mistakenly taking the edge of the squeeze to represent the edge of the slab). By 1888 the stone was lost.
Present condition:
Description
This was a small and slender rectangular slab, easily portable. On the upper part of one broad face was incised an almost equal-armed cross with double-scroll terminals to the upper arms and an oblong terminal, or base, to the lower arm. At a slant above the cross is a Latin inscription incised with forked serifs, which reads ‘dnedi’, an abbreviated version Domine Dei, ‘O Lord God’.
Date: eighth century.
References: Stuart 1856, 14, pl 42; Orkney Archives D29/8/8, 4 April 1888; ECMS pt 3, 24-5; Fisher 2002, 47, fig 3.5; Lowe 2002, 86; Scott & Ritchie 2014, 189, no 29.
Compiled by A Ritchie 2017
