Field Visit

Date 2007

Event ID 558231

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/558231

NR 92169 30334 Built into the outer facing of the ruinous N wall of the roofless meeting house at Clauchan is an architecturally sculpted stone.

It was a subrectangular block 0.45m wide, 0.26m high and 0.29m thick. Into the stone has been cut a 0.20m semicircular arch with a flat 50mm chamfer round the edge of the semicircle. The arch penetrates the stone for a depth of 140mm before opening out a further 20mm vertically then fanning towards the back of the block, where the diameter is 0.35m, leaving only a thin rim of the original block of stone.

The stone was the headpiece of a narrow round-headed window 0.20m wide that would have been approximately 1m high. Similar window heads carved from a single block of stone have been identified in chapels dated to the 13th century or earlier. Clauchan chapel replaced the original in 1805 and remained in use until superseded in 1890 by the present church at Shiskine. The original, known as Duchess Anne’s Church, was built about 1708, probably replacing a building in the adjacent old graveyard. Other re-used stones with chamfered edges occur within the standing walls of the ruin.

Funder: Arran Heritage Museum.

ACFA 2007