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Kingoldrum 1 Description of stone
Event ID 1031060
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1031060
Kingoldrum 1 (St Medan), Angus, Pictish cross-slab
Measurements: H 0.61m, W 0.38m, D 0.08m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: NO 3342 5504
Present location: National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh (IB 39)
Evidence for discovery: found in the walls of the medieval church when it was demolished in 1840.
Present condition: broken top and bottom and worn.
Description
This small cross-slab is carved in relief on both broad faces, and the top appears to have risen to an apex. Face A is edged with a flat-band moulding which expands on either side above the side-arm of the cross into the spiral joint of an animal’s foreleg, but the head of both animals is missing. A cross with rectangular terminals and square centre is carved in such a way that its side-arms extend across the flat-band border, and the cross itself has a flat-band moulding. It is entirely filled with coarse key pattern. On either side of the shaft are a pair of entwined and knotted serpentine creatures with ducks’ heads and fish tails. Their bodies have an incised median line, but the knots are not identical.
Face C displays a figure in a long robe sitting facing left on a chair which has a zoomorphic terminal to its back. The head of the figure is missing, but it faced a rectangular object subdivided into two unequal parts. Below are a mirror symbol, a decorated crescent, a step symbol filled with key pattern and a double-sided comb, and there is an animal facing left above the step symbol.
Date range: eighth or ninth century.
Primary references: Chalmers 1848, 14; ECMS pt 3, 226-7; Fraser 2008, no 64.
Desk-based information compiled by A Ritchie 2017.
