Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
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
