Publication Account
Date 2004
Event ID 1019651
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1019651
The focus of the visit to St Vigeans is the collection of about thirty early medieval carved stones now in the care of Historic Scotland. These are housed in one of the stone cottages to the north of the church, but they all come from the parish church and its churchyard on the opposite side of the road. Standing on the summi of a conical mound, the existing church dates back to the 12th century, variously extended and rebuilt in the 13th and 15th centuries, and extensively renovated and rebuilt in 1871. The rennovations of 1871 were by the architect Robert Rowand Anderson, and led to the discovery of many of the stones embedded in the fabric of the medieval church. Unlike the Meigle collection, which was recorded in detail in the course of the survey of South-east Perth (1994), that from St Vigeans has suffered grievously through this reuse, and few of the slabs are complete. Nevertheless, several slabs have been pieced together, and by careful recording the designs of some fo the least promising fragments can be reconstructed. The slabs represented amongst the fragments are wholly Christian in character, ranging from cross-slabs and recumbent monuments bearing Pictish symbols, to simple slabs with no more than an undercorated cross in relief on one side. Earlier drawings of the stones are as varied in their character as the stones themselves, the illustrations in Allen and Anderson's Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (1903) appearing at numerous different scales. The present survey is to standardised scales, and for the first time it is possible to make direct comparisons between the stones both here and elsewhere. Examples of the earlier illustrations are reproduced here, together with some fo the new pencil survey drawings at 1:10. The well-known cross-slab bearing the miniscule inscription DROSTEN: IRE UORET [E]TT FORCUS (suggested by Clancy to read Drosten in the time of Uoret and Forcus) was previously only shown in fragments.
Information from ‘RCAHMS Excursion Guide 2004: Commissioners' Field Excursion, Perth and Angus, 31 August – 2 September 2004’.
