Archaeology Notes

Event ID 714544

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/714544

NT33NW 9 33208 36949

NT33NW 46 3343 3751 Innerleithen Parish Church (Demolished)

NT33NW 125 33192 36947 Innerleithen Parish Church (New)

(NT 3320 3695) Cross (NR)

OS 6" map (1964)

NMRS REFERENCE

In 1871, when the old church of Innerleithen was demolished, there was found in its foundations the lower end of an early cross-shaft, together with the base into which it had originally fitted. The base was broken up, but the shaft is now set up on a modern pedestal outside the E end of the present parish church.

The fragment is of light-coloured freestone, oblong in section but with rounded angles; it is 2'8" long. All four faces are decorated, in pecked technique, with a regular pattern of cup-shaped hollows surrounded by double circles, the outer circles being linked together by vertical lines.

C A R Radford considers that, while a free-standing cross with a rectangular shaft cannot be earlier than the 8th century, so regular a design is unlikely to be later than c.900 AD.

RCAHMS 1967, visited 1957

EXTERNAL REFERENCE:

ORDNANCE SURVEY

This shaft is as described.

Visited by OS (EGC) 19 June 1961 and (SFS) 5 September 1974