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Field Visit
Date September 1980
Event ID 1121955
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1121955
St Oran's Cross.
The mutilated remains of this massive ringless cross, now displayed in the Nunnery Museum, were recorded in the late 19th century as being in St Oran's Chapel, and its present designation was suggested by R B K Stevenson. The surviving upper part of the shaft, now broken into two fragments measuring 1·82m in combined length, has at the top a tenon 0·37m wide and 0.14m high, which fitted into a mortice in the underside of a transom, now also broken, having a span of 1·99m. A second mortice in the upper side of the transom held the top arm, 1·09m in height and having a tenon 0·36m wide and 0·17m high, the overall height of the surviving part of the cross being about 3·45m. The original width of the shaft, which is damaged at the right edge and displays no perceptible taper, was about 0.55m, and the width of the arms is 0.51m. The armpits of the cross-head are almost fully semicircular, having a diameter of 0·44m. Whereas the shaft, including its tenon , has split longitudinally so that only one carved face is preserved, the cross-head is entire in thickness, although heavily abraded in parts. the upper and side-arms taper considerably from the centre, where the maximum thickness preserved is about 0·24m, towards their extremities where the thickness is about 0.11 m.
The material used for the shaft is a flaggy mica-granulite of reddish-grey colour. This stone is comparatively c1ose grained, and permitted carving of some refinement, but was fatally susceptible to lamination. The transom and upper arm are carved from a foliated gametiferous mica-schist, silver-grey in colour and providing a coarse material for the sculptor. Both of these stone-types are similar to the schists of Moine age found in the Ross of Mull, a few kilometres E of Iona.
It is suggested on pp. 17-18 that this is the earliest of the Iona group of crosses, dating probably from about the middle or the second half of the 8th century.
See RCAHMS 1982 pp.192-7 for a full illustrated description.
RCAHMS 1982, visited September 1980
