Fairlie Stone

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Fairlie Stone is located in the Parish Church of Fairlie , in North Ayrshire , Scotland . It is probably the surviving section of a carved grave slab and is an example of the so-called "Govan School". The sculptures are similar to those on the cross-slab of Inchinnan , at Renfrew in Renfrewshire and other examples of Govan-style that are clearly identified.

Fairlie Stone

From right to left you can see:

  • the main motif of the Govan style: an animal ( Pictish Beast ) biting its tail.
  • a larger beast with its mouth open, that
  • seems to attack a man lying on the ground with a round shield and sword.

In analogy to similar sculptures, the Fairlie stone can be from the 10th or the beginning of the 11th century. Like Inchinnan Cross-Slab, it comes from an abandoned chapel in the north of Fairlie. It may have stood on the site of an old church and cemetery where high-ranking local families buried their dead in the early Middle Ages .

The discovery of the Fairlie Stone, which served as a lintel over a fireplace, is well documented. It was found in 1745 while demolishing a chapel that was part of a farmhouse on the Kelburn Castle grounds . It had a lead coating but was cleaned and placed in the garden of St Margaret Manse in Fairlie. From there he was transferred to St. Margaret's Church and embedded in a wall in the entrance area. Eventually he was placed in a similar position in St Paul's Church, now the Parish Church of Fairlie. In 1894 the stone was described by a Mrs. Hutcheson in the volume of the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Interesting is the existence of this type of sculpture in the style of the Kingdom of Strathclyde far from their centers of power in Govan and Partick. Some historians believe that parts of Ayrshire were not under the rule of the Clyde kings, but under that of the Gall-Gaidhil, a Gaelic-Scandinavian mixed race that arose early when the west coast of Britain was the target of the first Viking raids. The Fairlie Stone and other examples of the Govan School, such as the sculpture south-east of Kilwinning, suggest that either the Gall-Gaidhil hired Govan-style stone cutters or were vassals of the Kings of Strathclyde.

literature

  • John Romilly Allen, Joseph Anderson: (1903) The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland) [pp.475 Part III], reprinted in facsimile of Pinkfoot Press in 1993.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ the Govan Stones are one of the best collections of early medieval sculptures in the British Isles. The city, which is now part of the City of Glasgow, has a long largely forgotten history as one of the earliest seats of Christianity in Scotland

Web links

Coordinates: 55 ° 45 '37.8 "  N , 4 ° 51' 16.8"  W.