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Newark Description of stone
Event ID 1085139
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Early Medieval Carved Stones Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1085139
Newark, Deerness, Orkney, Pictish cross-slab fragments
Measurements: H 0.85m, W 0.55m, D 0.09m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: HY 5746 0413
Present location: Orkney Museum, Kirkwall
Evidence for discovery: found face down in the shoreline in 2016, in spoil left after excavations in the 1970s. This was the site of a medieval chapel, together with a cemetery of burials radiocarbon-dated to the eighth to fourteenth centuries.
Present condition: very damaged and weathered.
Description
This was once part of a Pictish cross-slab carved in relief and incision on both broad faces, within a roll-moulded frame. The surviving fragments include a large portion of the central area of the slab, with a short intact section of the right-hand face B. The cross is outlined by roll moulding, as is a central roundel, and the arms have squared terminals, with circular, almost closed, armpits. The top of the shaft survives, narrower than the lower arm of the cross-head. The entire cross appears to have been filled with interlace. There are traces of carving in the spaces either side of the upper arm, and tucked in tightly below the right-hand arm is an S-beast with wide-open jaws, facing the cross.
Face C is very severely damaged apart from one area where the head of a large serpent-like creature may be seen, with a rod or tail between its open jaws.
Date: eighth or ninth century.
References: DES 2016, 135-6.
Desk-based infrmation compiled by A Ritchie 2019
