Reference
Date 2001
Event ID 921804
Category Documentary Reference
Type Reference
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/921804
Late medieval chapel in trapezoidal burial-ground.
(1) THE KILNAVE CROSS. This much-weathered cross, which stands in a reconstructed base 7m W of the chapel, is of greenish local Torridonian flagstone. It is 3.35m high, including a 0.72m butt, by 1.04m in original span, and only 65mm thick. The semicircular armpits are 0.36m across, and the side-arms projected only 90mm beyond them. The E face is framed by a plain 50mm margin, which in the shaft encloses a panel of spiralwork incorporating open-work roundels, above a worn panel of key-ornament. The latter motif is repeated in the vertical constrictions. The centre of the cross-head is filled with a 0.45m roundel of spiral-ornament emerging from a small central hollow. A smaller spiral roundel fills the constriction of the S arm, against a background of interlace, but the surface of the N arm is lost. The top arm contains low-relief spiral-ornament with bosses of varying sizes linked by peltae.
(2) Excavation in 1981 showed that the broken butt of the cross was fixed in a socket-slab, 1.53m by 1.05m by 0.2m, whose upper surface was grooved to hold slabs forming a box about 1.15m by 0.65m. An L-shaped grooved slab 1.42m long, found in the churchyard, was evidently half of a composite lid and has been incorporated in the reconstructed base, but in the absence of corner-posts it is not evident how it was stabilised.
I Fisher 2001.
