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Hall Of Rendall, St Thomas Kirk
Church (Period Unassigned), Settlement (Period Unassigned)
Site Name Hall Of Rendall, St Thomas Kirk
Classification Church (Period Unassigned), Settlement (Period Unassigned)
Canmore ID 282771
Site Number HY42SW 34
NGR HY 4262 2099
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/282771
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Evie And Rendall
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
Rendall, Orkney, tegulated coped gravestone
Measurements: L c 1.80m, W c 0.70m, H c 0.60m
Stone type:
Place of discovery: HY c 424 210
Present location: lost.
Evidence for discovery: sketched by George Low in 1774, when it was lying ‘in an uncultivated spot of ground’ in the parish of Rendall on the east side of mainland. It may have come from the graveyard of St Thomas’s Kirk, a medieval chapel set beside a possible broch. Tradition assigns it to the church at South Ettit (ID 2428), and this may have been its secondary destination.
Present condition:
Description
Low’s description suggests that this monument was very similar to that at Skaill, Deerness. It is not entirely certain that his drawing shows the Skaill stone rather than the Rendall stone.
Date: eleventh or twelfth century.
References: Low 1879, 55; Lang 1974, 230; Ritchie 2004, 19.
Compiled by A Ritchie 2017
Excavation
HY42SW 34 4262 2099
See also HY42SW 11.
Church and settlement HY 4262 2099 An emergency excavation was carried out in February 2005 of human remains eroding from the cemetery associated with St Thomas Kirk. Excavation and survey revealed 21 bodies, of which 16 were fully excavated and 5 were recorded and left in situ. A topographic survey was undertaken on the Atlantic
roundhouse, cemetery and the church remains.
Archive to be deposited in NMRS.
Sponsor: HS.
R Toolis and M Cook 2005.
