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'Knowe Of Desso'
Chapel (Medieval), Cross Slab (Early Medieval)
Site Name 'Knowe Of Desso'
Classification Chapel (Medieval), Cross Slab (Early Medieval)
Alternative Name(s) Denshow; Burn Of Denshow; Flaws; Aikerness
Canmore ID 2206
Site Number HY32NE 9
NGR HY 3767 2604
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/2206
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Evie And Rendall
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
Denshowe, Evie, Orkney, cross-slab
Measurements: H c 1.22m, W c 0.76m, D c 0.05m
Stone type: blue slate
Place of discovery: HY 3767 2604
Present location: lost.
Evidence for discovery: found buried in a knoll in 1852.
Present condition:
Description
One face of this slab was incised with an outline cross with scroll terminals to the arms and base: one hanging from each side-arm, two hanging from the upper arm and two curling upwards from the base of the shaft. Petrie describes the cross as filling ‘the whole face of the stone’, which suggest either that this was designed as a recumbent monument or, more probably, that the base was broken.
Date: eighth or ninth century.
References: NMS SAS MS 547, Petrie notebook no 10, 81-2; ECMS 2: 25; RCAHMS 1946: no. 301; Scott & Ritchie 2014, no 20.
Compiled by A Ritchie 2016
HY32NE 9 3767 2604.
(Name : HY 377 260) Knowe of Desso (NR)
OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed., (1900).
'A small eminance in an arable field and where it is supposed a chapel or church stood at one time ...'
Name Book 1880.
A knoll near the Burn of Denshow, between Flaws (HY 37 25) and Aikerness (HY 38 26) ( ? Burn of Desso), was trenched in 1852 (Information from G Petrie's notebook No.10, 181) and a slab of blue slate, about 4 ft long, 2 ft 6 ins broad and 2 ins thick, was found. On the slab was incised a cross, the whole length of the stone, the ends of which terminated in scrolls like those of the Papa Stronsay cross (Celtic cross - HY62NE/63 SE).
RCAHMS 1946.
The Knowe of Desso is a natural eminence at HY 3767 2604. There is no local knowledge of a church or chapel, nor of the present whereabouts of the incised cross-slab.
'Knowe' surveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (NKB) 9 June 1967.
