Manor Water

Manor Water (St Geordian), Peeblesshire, inscribed stone

Measurements: L 0.91m, H 0.24m

Stone type: whinstone

Place of discovery: NT 1923 3076

Present location: Tweeddale Museum & Gallery, Peebles (5204).

Evidence for discovery: the stone lay on a small cairn until 1890, when it was placed in a small enclosure nearby. In 1934 it was taken to Peebles Museum.

Present condition: fractured and battered.

Description

This irregularly shaped slab is almost triangular in section, and its one smooth face is incised with a two-line Latin inscription, set between two vertical lines. The inscription begins with a small equal-armed cross and in capital letters it reads CONINIE [MA]TIRIE, ‘Coninie the martyr’.

Date: later sixth century.

References: RCAHMS 1967, no 376; Smith 1990.

Compiled by A Ritchie 2016

NT13SE 3 1923 3076.

(NT 1923 3076) Coninie Stone and Cairn (NR) (site of)

OS 6" map, (1963).

This Early Christian inscribed stone (See RCAHMS 1967, fig.187) lay until 1890, in association with a cairn of stones at this site. It was taken to Peebles Museum in 1934, by which date the cairn had been demolished, but its position is probably marked by the circular setting of stonework here, in which there lies a concrete replica of the stone. The stone is a block of hard whinstone 3' long and 9 1/2" broad on the inscribed face. The lettering is dateable to the 6th century AD (Information from K H Jackson) (See also NT13SE 2).

RCAHMS 1967, visited 1962.

This site is generally as described. The Coninie Stone is still in Peebles Museum.

Visited by OS(EGC) 23 June 1961 and (BS) 4 October 1973.

Some 16km to the WSW of Yarrow, in the valley of the Newholmhope Burn, (a left bank tributary of the Manor Water), there is an Early Christian memorial of sixth-century date. This was found in 1890 in association with a cairn, which occupies a narrow shelf upslope from the traditional site of St Gordian's kirk. At this location there are the tuf-covered wall-footings of at least two rectangular buildings, which have been levelled with the slope, together with a series of scarps, scooped platforms and terraces (one of which has been adapted to form a double enclosure), and the whole is incorporated in the line of the head-dyke which deviates in its course to take in the settlement. Central to the site there are the remains of a substantially formed building (7.8m by 5.2m over stone walls 1.1m thick), which were investigated by trial trenching in 1962 by RCAHMS. To the NNE of this building there is another (7.5m by about 4.5m overall). The former may be a small border pele, but was believed by Pennecuik (1715) and Armstrong (1775) to be the site of St Gorgham's chapel. An area excavation would resolve the problem. The evidence nevertheless points to the presence, certainly by the sixth century, of a settled community in what was otherwise an isolated backwater of the Manor Valley. This no doubt goes some way towards accounting for the difficulties which have been met within the parish itself in deciding where the earliest parochial centre may have been. The neighbouring names 'Kirkhope' (Blaeu 1654) and 'Kirkstead' (1315), taken with the presence of a sixth-century memorial stone points to the probable antiquity of this site, and comparison with the setting of Over Kirkhope is not inappropriate in this context. Again, there must be a very real possiblity of indentifying within a fairly limited area, evidence of activity in the Early Historic period.

The memorial is inscribed on a slab of whinstone which has been fractured in an attempt to break it for reuse in dyking; this accounts for a number of wedge-shaped and pitted-hollows which cross the stone on its main axis (their presence has previously eluded mention). The inscription is framed by two vertiocal lines and reads + CONINIE/[]RTRIE...

...From a study of the stone made in August 1988 (in the Chambers Institute, Peebles), it is clear that the supposed fragmentary letter is no more than a weathered fracture which most probably originated at the time the stone was partially split and its corner detatched; it is a slight and irregular groove (another meets the down-stroke of the R at its base) and this contrasts with the deeply v-incised and punctiliously formed characters that make up the rest of the inscription. From a measured analysis of the spacing of those characters it is clear that the scuptor intended both lines to be co-terminous. The first line is indented to provide space for a spindrelled Greek cross, and to account for this a marginal adjustemnt was required in the spacing of the characters of the second line (in contrast to the slightly compressed rendering of CONINIE). Further, he (Jackson) accepted a standard for the size of both consonants and vowels which is unique to each line (probably no more than a rule-of-thumb tabulation). This presupposes an initial marking-out of the slab, either in paint or charcoal, before the characters were finally incised. From this it is clear that there are in fact two missing letters: one a vowel, the other a double-stemmed consonant, either M or W. The substitutable options are few. To make any sense and to account for the module of spacing, the missing letters have to be MA thus [MA]RTIRIE and hence CONINIE MARTIRIE, 'Coninie the martyr'.

Circumstantial evidence in support of the proposed rendering is provided by the dedication of the later church to St Gordian, a fourth-century martyr who was put to death in the reign of the Emperor Julian (AD 362). Two reputed relics of the saint were preserved in Salisbury Cathedral, but he had no dedication in England and only one in Scotland; the parish church of Manor, Peebleshire. The inexplicable resort to this style of dedication in a rural backwater of Tweedale can be accounted for if one assumes the survival of a tradition in this locality of an earlier martyrdom (for which there was, perhaps, visible epigraphic proof); the sanctity of one being confirmed and revealed by the other for the possible context for a martyrdom within sixth-century Goddea, we need look no further than the clash between Christian and pagan factions which culimnated in the Battle of Arthivet in 573. If Jackson is right in his dating of the stone (probably not later than the second half of the sixth century) both the assignation and the milieu would closely concur.

I M Smith 1990, visited July 1981