Wamphray Description of stone
Event ID 1084420
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1084420
Wamphray, Dumfriesshire, cross-shaft fragment
Measurements: H 1.25, W 0.48m, D c 0.27
Stone type: yellow sandstone
Place of discovery: NY 1305 9646
Present location: re-used as lintel above west door of nineteenth-century church.
Evidence for discovery: D Christison drew Allen’s attention to the stone in 1898, but a rubbing of the stone had been sent to SAS ‘many years ago’ (RB 218). The stone was cleaned in the late 1960s. There was an earlier church on the site, which lies close to the confluence of the Wamphray Water and the Kirk Burn.
Present condition: some edge damage but unworn.
Description
Part of a cross-shaft neatly trimmed so as to show two panels of ornament on each broad face. The whole of face A is visible, but only part of faces C and D and nothing of face B. The shaft has cable mouldings at the edges, and the panels are framed by cable mouldings. On face A, the upper panel contains a medallion of interlocking plant scroll in a cruciform design within a cable moulded frame, with three-leaf terminals to each scroll. Outside the medallion and within each corner of the panel are foliate terminals. Filling the lower panel is an animal which has been described as a dragon but which has no specifically dragon-like features. Its snout and lappet are elongated so as to intertwine with its body, limbs and tail. Only the two nearside limbs are shown, both elongated and interwined and ending in stylised frond-like feet with long toes.
Slightly different versions of the same animal appear to be contained in each of the two panels on face C. The narrow face D has simple two-strand interlace with long glides within a cable moulded frame.
Date: early ninth century.
References: ECMS pt 3, 449-50; RCAHMS 1997, no 1769, 256.
Desk-based information compiled by A Ritchie 2019
