St Nicholas Description of stone
Event ID 1017220
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017220
St Nicholas’ Chapel 2, Papa Stronsay, Orkney, portable altar fragments
Measurements: 0.30m by 0.27m, D 0.04m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: HY 6695 2918
Present location: Headland Archaeology, Edinburgh.
Evidence for discovery: found re-used in the floor of the nave of the twelfth-century St Nicholas’ Chapel during excavations in 1998.
Present condition: five conjoining fragments survive, representing some two thirds of the slab. The carved surface is damaged and worn.
Description
These fragments come from a portable altar slab with chamfered edges. The upper face is firmly incised, using compasses, with five encircled crosses, of which two are incomplete and a sixth is missing. There would originally have been a central cross and a cross in each corner.
Date: early medieval.
References: Lowe 2002, 88-90; Scott & Ritchie 2014, no 31.
Compiled by A Ritchie 2017
