Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral
Graffiti (Medieval) - (20th Century), Hogback Stone (Early Medieval), Masons Mark(S) (Medieval)
Site Name Kirkwall, St Magnus Cathedral
Classification Graffiti (Medieval) - (20th Century), Hogback Stone (Early Medieval), Masons Mark(S) (Medieval)
Canmore ID 2485
Site Number HY41SW 10.01
NGR HY 4494 1087
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/2485
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Kirkwall And St Ola
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, hogback gravestone fragment
Measurements: L 0.37, W 0.24m, H 0.18m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: HY 4494 1087
Present location: The Orkney Museum, Kirkwall
Evidence for discovery: found amongst builder’s rubble beneath the floor of the cathedral in 1913. It is likely to have come from the nearby graveyard of St Olaf’s Kirk, because the building of the cathedral began in the mid twelfth century.
Present condition: broken and worn.
Description
This fragment comes from the higher, presumably head, end of a gravestone with a plain rounded ridge and three rows of tegulae. The tegulae are rectangular with trimmed corners.
Date: eleventh century.
References: RCAHMS 1946, I, 47; Lang 1974, 227-8 (Kirkwall 1).
Compiled by A Ritchie 2017
HY41SW 10.1 4494 1087.
Found in 1913 during restoration of St Magnus Cathedral among debris from under the chancel floor. Now in Tankerness House Museum, Kirkwall.
RCAHMS 1946; J T Lang 1974.
Field Visit (2019)
HY 4494 1087 Graffiti in accessible areas of the ground floor of the cathedral has been recorded throughout 2019. These include over 100 medieval masons’ marks distributed across all extant phases of construction in the cathedral. Several 19th-20th-century name-and-date graffiti, both incised and drawn in pencil, incised crosses, a medieval compass-drawn hexafoil and other more ambiguous marks have also been recorded.
Nearly 70 volunteers have been trained and coordinated by ORCA. Archival research is planned for the next stage of the project. Fieldwork is still ongoing and set to continue into the New Year.
Archive: NRHE (intended)
Funder: Orkney Archaeology Society, Heritage Lottery Fund
Antonia Thomas - Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA), University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute
(Source: DES Vol 20)
