Field Visit
Date October 1988
Event ID 1082897
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1082897
CROSS. A churchyard cross of Lowland type has been re-erected in an octagonal base 6m E of the burial-aisle. The tapered shaft measures 1.97m in visible height and 0.35m in width by 0.22m at base, the angles being bevelled to form an irregular octagon. It is plain except for an inverted pair of shears incised near the foot of the narrow NW face. The lower 0.3m of the foliated cross-head, a little more than half of its original height, remains intact (en.10*), and the overall height of the cross was about 2.5m. The octagonal socket-stone, which like the cross is of chlorite-schist, has bevelled sides and measures 0.92m by 0.89m at the top by 0.4m in visible height. This was said in local tradition to be a market cross connected with the annual market granted at 'Kilmary' by Charles II in 1680, and Drummond recorded that it was a 'bargain cross'; 'the contracting parties standing on the step shook hands, their other hand touching the cross' (en.11). The cross, however, is probably of 15th-century date and erected as a work of piety like crosses of West Highland type such as that at Kilmory Knap (No. 76). (Drummond, Monuments, pls. 91, 1 and 2, 92, 1; Steer and Bannerman, Monumental Sculpture, fig.22, 3 on p.l74 (shears)).
RCAHMS 1992, visited October 1988
