Rosemarkie Description of stone

Event ID 1020971

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1020971

Early Medieval Carved Stones Project

Rosemarkie 1, Ross & Cromarty, Pictish cross-slab

Measurements: H 2.60m +, W 0.77m tapering to 0.71m, D 0.18m

Stone type: red sandstone

Place of discovery: NH 7372 5763

Present location: Groam House Museum, Rosemarkie (ROMGH.1992.1)

Evidence for discovery: found in two pieces in the floor of the old church prior to its demolition and the construction of a new church in 1821. Given the careful break between the two main panels on each face, it seems likely that the two halves had been re-used as gravestones at some earlier period, and the two square holes towards the base of face A may relate to that re-use. By the end of the nineteenth century, they had been concreted together and set upright in a metal cage outside the church. The slab was taken into Groam House Museum before it opened in 1980.

Present condition: very worn on all four surviving faces, as well as broken top and bottom. A small part of the top left corner of face A was been found separately.

Description

This very elaborately ornamented monument is carved in low relief on all four surviving faces, and it tapers slightly towards the base. Face A is edged with a double roll moulding and is divided by single roll mouldings into three panels. In the centre of what was originally a rectangular panel is a small square panel defined by roll moulding, which contains an equal-armed cross with squared terminals to the arms and open circular armpits. The cross is worn smooth but may originally have been decorated, and there are traces of a fine roll moulding outlining it. The sunken background to the cross bears key pattern, which extends into the armpits as spirals. Around the cross panel are four vertical rows of conjoined circular interlace with cruciform shapes between the rows. The middle panel contains an inner rectangle of zoomorphic interlace surrounded by a border of interlace. Only the top part of the third panel survives, with two circles flanked by lentoid forms, all four containing dense interlace work.

Face B is edged by a single roll moulding and is divided transversely by flatband mouldings into six rectangular panels of differing length. Each contains interlaced work of differing designs.

Face C is edged by double roll mouldings and is divided into three large panels by single roll mouldings. The top panel contains four huge Pictish symbols: three crescents and V-rods and one double disc and Z-rod, each with elaborate internal ornament, although most of the top crescent is missing. This internal ornament ranges from open zoomorphic interlace to dense key pattern, and the double disc is filled with seventeen spiral bosses. Between the top two crescent and V-rod symbols is carved zoomorphic interlace, but the background to the two lower symbols is plain. Instead a small double-sided comb is tucked in between the double disc and the lower arm of its Z-rod, and below the lowest crescent and V-rod are two motifs resembling Roman paterae. The middle square panel has key pattern forming a border round a central square panel containing an equal-armed cross. Again the cross is worn smooth but may originally have been ornamented. It has a square centre and stepped arm terminals, and there is raised boss between each of the terminals; both cross and bosses are surrounded by dense interlace. The third panel is full of key pattern.

Face D is edged by single roll moulding and is divided by flatband mouldings into three long panels: the top contains interlace, the middle contains zoomorphic interlace and th lower median-incised interlace.

Date: eighth or ninth century.

References: ECMS pt 3, 63-8; Henderson 1990, [1-3]; Henderson & Henderson 2004, 49-52; Seright & Henderson 2013, 6-7.

Desk-based information compiled by A Ritchie 2017.