Field Visit
Date 11 June 1915
Event ID 928398
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/928398
Chapel and Sculptured Stones, Bagh Ban, Pabbay.
On what is now a mound some 10 feet high, on the south-western border of the sandy slope running up from Bagh Ban on the eastern shore of Pabbay, about 150 yards from the high-water mark, are the indistinct foundations of an oblong church of stone and lime measuring about 31 feet in length and 14 feet in breadth externally, and orientated slightly north of west and south of east. Great quantities of human bones are reported to have been found here from time to time as the sand drifted away.
SYMBOL STONE.
The symbol stone described in Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, p. 111, and Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., Vol. XXXI., p.300, lies on the side of the mound. It is a much weathered rough slab 4 feet long and 1 foot 3 inches broad. At the top is a cross, side arms potent, resting on a crescent with divergent floriated rods symbol, and the lily symbol underneath the latter.
CROSS SLABS.
There are also three slabs of gneiss, each bearing an incised cross, on the mound. The largest is a prism roughly square in section, and measures 4 feet 4 inches in height and about 1 foot square. On one face is a cross potent within a larger cross, the top arm of which is potent. The outer cross measures 11 inches in length and 8 inches in breadth, while the inner cross is 7 ¾ inches long and 6 inches broad. (Fig. 175)
The other two cross stones are of very small dimensions. Both are regular, natural prisms of rectangular section. One measures 14 inches in height above ground, 5 inches broad, and 2 ½ inches thick. The small Latin cross incised at the top of one face measures 4 inches long and 2 ¾ inches broad. The other stone, which was lying on the surface of the ground, is 14½ inches long, 4 inches broad, and 2 ½ inches thick. The cross faintly cut at the top of one face is 5 ½ inches long and 2 ¾ inches broad.
RCAHMS 1928, visited 11 June 1915.
OS map: Barra lxix.
