Gask, 'bore Stone'

Gask (Bore Stone), Perthshire, cross-slab

Measurements: H 1.88m +, W 1.08m, D 0.23m

Stone type: Old Red Sandstone

Place of discovery: NN 9730 1813

Present location: beside Moncrieffe House at NO 1366 1933

Evidence for discovery: first recorded by James Skene around 1832 in a field at Gask, when the stone was already damaged (this suggests that it had fallen and been re-erected at some time prior to that date). It was moved to the garden of Moncrieffe House towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Present condition: very weathered and worn, and the top of the slab is missing.

Description

This once magnificent cross-slab is carved in relief on both broad faces and was probably more than two metres high before the upper part was broken. Each bears a ringed cross, the armpits of which are cut through the stone to form voids. The crosses are almost, but not quite, identical, each outlined by a roll moulding and with a square central panel in the head, rectangular terminals and scrolls hanging from the underside of the arms and from the base of the ring on either side of the shaft. Traces of panels of interlace patterns are visible within the cross on face A, including at least four panels in the shaft. There are animals and figures in the background to the cross, and it should be noted that Ian G Scott’s drawing, which is followed here, is significantly different from the interpretative drawing published in Trench-Jellicoe (1997, illus 4). The ornament is arranged in five registers either side of the cross-shaft: on the right, from the top, a quadruped facing right, a wolf with an enmeshed tail and a smaller animal in its jaws facing left, a quadruped facing right towards a human figure with a spear, two confronted quadrupeds, a human figure in a tunic facing right towards a defaced area; on the left, from the top, a long-legged quadruped facing left, a boar facing right, a boar facing left, a seated quadruped with a long tail, and a scene with at least one human figure.

On face C there are at least four panels of interlace pattern in the cross-shaft, including a middle panel where the interlace forms a cross. To the right of the shaft there are six registers of ornament, from the top a quadruped facing left, a boar with exaggerated bristles facing left above a similar boar facing right, a serpent and Z-rod symbol above a horse-rider facing left and a double-headed flower symbol, and at the bottom a horse-rider facing left and a hound. To the left of the shaft there are five registers, from the top two centaurs one on top of the other facing left with spiral hair and tail, above a horned animal and a small animal facing left, a quadruped whose tail ends in a serpent’s head, and finally two large spirals. Allen remarked of this cross-slab that ‘the collection of animals represented is one of the most remarkable on any early Christian monument in great Britain’ (ECMS pt 3, 292).

Date: ninth century.

References: ECMS pt 3, 291; Trench-Jellicoe 1997, 164-8; Fraser 2008, no 183.

Compiled by A Ritchie 2016

NN91NE 26 9730 1813 removed to NO 1366 1933

This cross-slab stood in a field on the south side of the road from Gask House to Gask Church. It is now at Moncrieffe House. See also NO11NW 10.

(Undated) information from OS Record Card.