Clach a' Charridh

The Clach a' Charridh or Shandwick Stone is a Class II Pictish stone located near Shandwick on the Tarbat peninsula in Easter Ross, Scotland. It is a scheduled monument.^[1] Since 1988 it has been encased in a glass cover room.

Reverse and Front of Shandwick Stone from Stuart: Sculptured Stones of Scotland Vol 1, 1856

Carving

It is a Class II stone, with a jewelled cross studded with 54 raised spiral bosses on the top half of one side and various Pictish symbols on the reverse.^[2]

On the face beneath the arms of the cross there are four-winged cherubim in frames either side of the cross-shaft. Beneath these are indeterminate beasts above interlaced serpent-like creatures. At the bottom, beneath the cross are two double-discs each composed of two pairs of serpents whose upper bodies form the rim of a disc with their lower bodies interlaced together in the centre of the other disc of the pair.

The reverse contains four full-width panels above a 2 x 2 arrangement of panels at the bottom (but the bottom 2 half-width panels are now hidden). The top panel shows a Pictish double-disc with (mostly) triple-spiral decoration. The second panel shows a large Pictish Beast with three small animals: two horned sheep and another quadruped with a long tail. The third panel is usually referred to as a hunting scene. It shows a large assortment of men and animals with three of the men mounted on horses hunting a stag; two men on foot fighting each other with swords while holding shields; and a man with a peaked cap firing a bow at a stag. The fourth panel contains 52 triple-spirals in concentric circles. The bottom 2 x 2 panels contain circular knotwork and interlace.

History and orientation

The earliest published record of the stone is in Rev Charles Cordiner's Antiquities and Scenery of the North of Scotland, in a series of Letters to Thomas Pennant, London, 1780 where the reverse side is illustrated. The next published record is a paper by Charles Petley (1780 - 1830) written c.1811-2, delivered posthumously to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1831 and published in 1857^[3]. This illustrates both faces of the stone, with the cross-face referred to as "west" and the reverse as "east" (see the accompanying plate showing the reverse). The paper includes these statements:

The length of the cross on the west side in 5 feet 7 inches. It is supposed that the workmanship of this is much more modern than that of the east side...

The stone fell in a storm in 1846^[4] and was re-erected. Today the cross faces east towards the sea and the Pictish symbols face west over the land.

The Gaelic name (Clach a’ Charaidh) means ‘stone of the grave-plots’. A burial ground here was recorded in 1889 as last used during the cholera epidemic of 1832 and ploughed under about 1885.^[5]

References

^ Historic Environment Scotland. "Clach a' Charridh,cross slab (Shandwick Stone) (SM1674)". Retrieved 24 February 2019.
^ "The Shandwick Stone". Highland Council: Historic Environment Record. Archived from the original on 16 May 2013. Retrieved 18 October 2009.
^ Petley, Charles (1831). "A Short Account of some Carved Stones in Ross-shire, accompanied with a series of Outline Engravings" (PDF). Archaeologia Scotica. 4: 345–352 – via Archaeology Data Services.
^ Allen, J.Romilly (1903). The early Christian Monuments of Scotland. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. pp. 68 Part III.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
^ "The Pictish Trail". Highland Council: Historic Environment Record. Archived from the original on 14 August 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2009.