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Tullibole Church, Cross-slab
Cross Slab (Early Medieval)
Site Name Tullibole Church, Cross-slab
Classification Cross Slab (Early Medieval)
Canmore ID 26515
Site Number NO00SE 9
NGR NO 0545 0080
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/26515
- Council Perth And Kinross
- Parish Fossoway (Perth And Kinross)
- Former Region Tayside
- Former District Perth And Kinross
- Former County Kinross-shire
Tullibole 1, Perthshire, cross-slab
Measurements: H 1.30, W 0.51m, D 0.18m
Stone type: sandstone
Place of discovery: NO 0545 0080
Present location: National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh (IB 99)
Evidence for discovery: found lying prone in the churchyard just south of the foundations of the old church in the 1870s, and given to the museum in 1892.
Present condition: very weathered, with damage to the top edge.
Description
This slab is carved in relief on both broad faces and on the two side faces. Face A bears a cross with rectangular terminals and rounded closed armpits, outlined by roll moulding and filled with interlace. A spiral hangs from the intact right-hand terminal and a double spiral appendage is attached to the arc closing the armpits on either side of the right arm. The ornament on the left-hand side of the cross-head is too worn to identify. The background to the cross beneath the level of the lower arm contains diagonal key pattern face C is divided into four panels by roll moulding. The top panel contains a horserider facing right and behind him a frontal human figure with crossed legs, while below them are a quadruped and a hound. The panel below contains two roundels, the left-hand one ornamented by a cruciform pattern. Below again re two panels side by side, the left containing two figures who appear to be wrestling and the right two confronted serpents with looped bodies. There is interlace carved within roll-moulded panels on faces B and D.
Date: tenth century.
References: Galloway 1879; ECMS pt 3, 375-6.
Compiled by A Ritchie 2016
Publication Account (1933)
Sculptured Stone from Tullibole.
This stone, which originally stood within the old churchyard at Tullibole, is now preserved in the National Museum of Antiquities. It is an upright cross-slab of sandstone, of nearly rectangular form but tapering slightly upwards, measuring 4 ¼ feet high, 1 foot 8 inches wide at the top, 1 ½ feet at the bottom, and from 6 to 7 inches thick. It is sculptured in relief on all four sides thus: -
FRONT. In the middle, and extending the full length of the slab, is a cross decorated with a six-cord plait and having spiral terminations to the arms. At the sinister side of the shaft the background shows traces of a diagonal key pattern.
BACK. A plain framework is divided by two plain horizontal lines into three panels, the lower of which is subdivided by a plain vertical line. The four panels thus formed are filled with figure-subjects and other ornamentation. The uppermost and largest contains a group, apparently a hunting scene. Behind a man on horseback stands another man on foot, wearing a sword at his left side and having his left arm upraised, while below are a hind and what seem to be two other animals, as seen from the front. The panel beneath this is occupied by two circular bosses, both of which show traces of indeterminate carving. Of the two panels at the bottom the one on the dexter side shows two men wrestling, and the other, on the sinister side, two eared or horned serpents, coiled together in much the same manner as those on the Dogton Stone, Fife.
LEFT AND RIGHT SIDES. A broken four-cord plait-work. Cf. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xiii (1878-9), p. 316 fl. ; Early Christian Monuments, pp. 375-6.
RCAHMS 1933
Field Visit (19 December 1967)
The exact find spot of this cross-slab could not be ascertained. No trace of a socket stone was found and local enquiries failed to provide any futher information.
Visited by OS (R D) 19 December 1967.
Desk Based Assessment
NO00SE 9 0545 0080
See also NO00SE 8.
(N0 0545 0080). A class III cross-slab ornamented with interlace work, men, animals etc, found lying in the old churchyard at Tullibole, immediately S of the foundations of the old church (NO00SE 8), is now in the NMAS (Acc No: IB 99). It is 4ft 3ins long by 1ft 87ins broad at the top and 1ft 6ins at the bottom; at the top it is 7ins thick, tapering
to about 6ins at the bottom. It must have been originally fixed in a socket.
W Galloway 1879; Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1892; J R Allen and J Anderson 1903; RCAHMS 1933.
Information from OS.
