Great Cumbrae Island, Millport, Mid Kirkton
Carved Stone (Early Medieval), Lintel (Early Medieval)(Possible)
Site Name Great Cumbrae Island, Millport, Mid Kirkton
Classification Carved Stone (Early Medieval), Lintel (Early Medieval)(Possible)
Canmore ID 319871
Site Number NS15NE 12.08
NGR NS 15756 55168
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/319871
- Council North Ayrshire
- Parish Cumbrae
- Former Region Strathclyde
- Former District Cunninghame
- Former County Buteshire
Kirkton 8, Great Cumbrae, architectural carved stone
Measurements: L 0.96m, W 0.34, D 0.10m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: NS 15756 55168
Present location: Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum (1-’32).
Evidence for discovery: found buried in the churchyard sometime prior to 1907 and kept in the manse garden until 1931, when it was acquired by Waddell and taken the following year to Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum.
Present condition: broken, battered and worn.
Description
This slab is carved on one broad face and one long narrow face, and the back has been left quite rough. The other long narrow face is damaged. Face A has a plain border round two carved panels: on the left is a rectangular panel containing two simple twists of cord set vertically, with three pellets between the twists. The main panel has a roll moulding frame and is divided into two inner panels: first a rectangular panel filled with three different types of loop with pellets between them, and then a panel containing a cruciform knot with more pellets and cord fillers.
The arrangement of the ornament implies that half or slightly less of the original slab has survived: the upper margin rises over the cruciform knot but then drops only a little, which suggests that the knot was not the centre of the design.
Face B has roll-moulded edges and a long panel of continuous T-fret, which is constricted part way along, where the lower roll moulding makes a curve inwards.
This slab is thought to have acted as a decorative panel over an opening, probably a doorway, in such a way that face B was the underside.
Date range: early medieval.
Primary references: Waddell 1932, 411-12; Batey 1994, 67-9; Fisher 2001, 71-2.
Desk-based information compiled by A Ritchie 2019
Reference (2001)
(8) Slab of sandstone, found buried in the old churchyard some years before 1907 and subsequently preserved in the garden of the manse, now Kirkton House, which lies NW of the churchyard (d). It was acquired by J J Waddell in 1931 and lent to Glasgow Art Gallery and Museum, although this location was not published until 1994 (e).
The carving is a rectangular slab of sandstone, broken at one end and having one irregular side, which measures 0.96m by 0.32m to 0.36m , and 100mm in thickness. It is carved on one face and one edge, and the design of the ornament as well as the roughness of the back and one side supports the suggestion that it may have been a lintel (f). The face has a plain 50mm to 60mm margin, which returns at the left end with a width of 70mm but at the upper side varies from 100mm to 30mm to match the curving edge of the main panel. At the left there is a vertical panel containing two twists, with slight traces of double-beading, and with single pellets in three of the spaces between them. It is separated by a narrow bar from the moulding that encloses the main carved area, itself divided into two surviving panels. One of these is almost rectangular, but the moulding along the top curves to accommodate a higher panel with a cruciform knot which presumably occupied the centre of the slab (g). The left panel has along the bottom a double-looped band with the triple-beaded or contoured outline typical of Anglo-Scandinavian animal-ornament, and what may be the head of the same creature, with a large eye and slightly upturned and elongated snout, appears at the base of the right panel. If this is so, it is overlain not only by the dividing moulding but also by two vertical bars with looped ends in the right part of the left panel. Along the top of the panel there is a narrower multi-looped band, and the interspaces of the panel, and some of the loops themselves, are filled with pellets. The top moulding of this panel is prolonged above the left limb of the adjoining cruciform knot as a double moulding whose lower member returns vertically to divide the panels. The top terminal of the knot rises above its frame, which to the right is treated as a meander pattern above the right limb and a T-shaped fret below it, although the damaged vertical moulding that separated it from the lost panel to the right is a straight bar (h). The knot is composed of two loops plaited at right angles and with their terminals forming Stafford knots, and it is surrounded by pellets resembling those found in Anglo-Scandinavian carvings in Cumbria (i).
The lower edge of the slab bears a continuous T-fret whose left edge is aligned with the edge of the small panel on the main face. This fret is interrupted 0.57m from the left end, where the lower margin curves up, presumably to avoid a flaw or break in the slab, and the spandrels are filled by two hollow triangles. The incomplete area to the right contains two straight-line spirals.
(Rubbing by Rev A Grierson, 1907 (NMRS, MS 28 (SAS 156); Waddell, J J, in PSAS, 66 (1931-2), 411-12; tracing by J J Waddell in NMRS, DC 17694; Batey, C, in Ritchie 1994, 67-9; Cross 1984, C9).
I Fisher 2001
