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Tillytarmont No.5
Pictish Symbol Stone (Pictish)
Site Name Tillytarmont No.5
Classification Pictish Symbol Stone (Pictish)
Alternative Name(s) Tillytarmont No.6
Canmore ID 17838
Site Number NJ54NW 22
NGR NJ 5331 4716
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/17838
- Council Aberdeenshire
- Parish Cairnie
- Former Region Grampian
- Former District Gordon
- Former County Aberdeenshire
Tillytarmont 5, Aberdeenshire, Pictish symbol stone
Measurements: H 1.45m, W 0.60m
Stone type: granite
Place of discovery: NJ 5331 4716
Present location: in the Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen (ABdua.39614).
Evidence for discovery: found during ploughing in 1974 in the same field as nos 1-4 on a promontory at the confluence of the Isla and Deveron rivers, North Tillytarmont Farm, and taken initially to a garden at Whitehills where it formed part of a revetment. It was found ‘above a stone spread adjacent to a square cairn’, which implies that all five stones may have been associated in some way with a cemetery of Pictish platform cairns.
Present condition: the carving is worn.
Description
The slab has a rounded top and is incised on one broad face with a serpent and Z-rod above an arch (or horseshoe) and a mirror. The serpent’s scales are depicted, and the arch is filled with running spirals.
Date: seventh century.
References: Fraser 2008, no 46.5.
Desk-based information compiled by A Ritchie 2017
NJ54NW 22 5331 4716.
(Tillytarmont no. 6). Found during ploughing in 1974 above a stone spread adjacent to a square cairn (NJ54NW 24), 70m from the Tillytarmont 5 stone (NJ54NW 20) and now (similarly) at Little Craigherbs, Whitehills, Banff and Buchan (NJ 6524 6473), this slab (1.45m by 0.6m) bears a serpent, a possible Z-rod, an arch with internal decoration, and a mirror and comb. (Archive in NMRS).
N H Trewin 1974; I A G Shepherd 1984; RCAHMS 1985; RCAHMS 1994.
Letter from Dr N H Trewin, Dept of Geology, Marischal College, Aberdeen to Ordnance Survey, 9 April 1974.
Now in the Marishal Museum, University of Aberdeen.
Information from Mr N Curtis, 23 August 1996.
Renumbered Tillytarmont no.5.
Information from RCAHMS (IFr), 21 March 2005.
Class I symbol stone - Tillytarmont 5 - Horseshoe underneath a serpent and Z-rod with a mirror-and-comb to the right.
A Mack 1997 p.95
