Edderton Free Church

Edderton 3, Ross & Cromarty, cross-slab fragments

Measurements: (before breakage) H 0.99m, W 0.56m, D 0.08m

Stone type: sandstone

Place of discovery: NH 7193 8422

Present location: at Edderton Free Parish Church.

Evidence for discovery: found and photographed by the Rev Donald Macrae in 1903, but subsequently broken and later relocated amongst the broken gravestones in the ruined chapel in 1992 by Richard Easson and Douglas Scott.

Present condition: two large and one small fragments have survived but they are very worn.

Description

Two conjoining fragments and a third detached fragment survive of the upper part of a rectangular cross-slab carved in relief on one broad face. The 1903 photographs show that it bore an equal-armed cross with a central roundel and rounded armpits, surrounded by bird and animal imagery. What survives are the left-hand and upper arms and part of the background, bordered by a plain flatband moulding of varying width: narrow along the left-hand side, wider on the right and considerably deeper along the top. The arms appear to be plain but may have lost their ornament through weathering, for the photographs show that the central roundel was decorated. The upper arm is flanked by very similar fox-like animals with long bushy tails, arranged with their backs along the side and top of the arm (the other side is missing but was the same). Beneath the side arms are leaping hounds, and there was a very large bird beneath the lower arm, of which only its drooping tail-feathers survive. These fragments have been reconstructed as part of the same slab as Edderton 3 by Ian G Scott, but, as Anderson observed, the right-hand margins do not match.

Date: ninth or tenth century.

References: Anderson 1904, 538-41; Scott 2004.

Compiled by A Ritchie 2017

Edderton 4, Ross & Cromarty, cross-slab fragments

Measurements: (before breakage) H 0.79m, W 0.28m, D 0.08m

Stone type: sandstone

Place of discovery: NH 7193 8422

Present location: at Edderton Free Parish Church.

Evidence for discovery: found and photographed by the Rev Donald Macrae in 1903, but subsequently broken and later relocated amongst the broken gravestones in the ruined chapel in 1992 by Richard Easson and Douglas Scott.

Present condition: two large fragments have survived but they are very worn.

Description

These two fragments form the greater part of the lower portion of a rectilinear slab carved in relief on one broad face. The narrow flatband border appears to continue along the foot of the slab and may imply that it was a recumbent monument. Within the border there appears to have been a single panel of curvilinear ornament, including a fine two-cord spiral. These fragments have been reconstructed as part of the same slab as Edderton 2 by Ian G Scott, but, as Anderson observed, the right-hand margins do not match.

Date: ninth or tenth century

References: Anderson 1904, 41; Scott 2004.

Compiled by A Ritchie 2017

NH78SW 23 719 842

Two cross-slabs found in 1903 by Donald Macrae.

Fragments of two cross-slabs found 1992 by D Scott and R Easson.

Photographed by RCAHMS in 1994.

For cross-slab at NH 7190 8420, see NH78SW 3. For Free Church (old parish church), see NH78SW 4.

See MS/28/212 for photographs.