Caithness heritage attraction hope as brand new Pictish cross-slab set to be unveiled in village
A newly carved Pictish cross-slab replica is due to be unveiled in Halkirk after years of painstaking research and craftmanship.
The re-creation of the Skinnet Cross has been undertaken by expert sculptor David McGovern and is expected to provide Caithness with a new heritage attraction.
A dedication ceremony is being held in the village on Saturday, with members of the public welcome to go along to witness the stone being unveiled.
The original Skinnet Cross, a ninth-century Pictish cross-slab discovered on Skinnet Farm, is now housed in the North Coast Visitor Centre in Thurso. It was badly damaged and eroded when it was discovered at St Thomas Chapel in 1861.
Now the new version, re-imagining how the original looked when newly carved, will be installed nearby.
The carving, commissioned by the Northern Pilgrims Way, a volunteer group which has re-established the medieval pilgrimage route from Tain to Kirkwall, took just over a year.
Mr McGovern, who is based in Angus, used measured drawings, old and new photographs and modern techniques such as photogrammetry to resurrect the design and carve it in sandstone using only a hammer and chisel at his workshop in Monikie.
Jane Coll, of the Northern Pilgrims Way, said the replica Skinnet Cross would be a new landmark for pilgrims and other people from near and far to visit.
She said: “It’s going to look fantastic – it’s all of seven-foot tall, it’s covered in these carvings, we’ll have a couple of picnic benches and we’ll have three information panels, so it’ll be a nice wee corner for people to come to.
“The original stone is in the North Coast Visitor Centre but it’s very damaged, very worn – this will look the way the stone would have looked when it was originally made.”
She added: “It is the most ambitious thing that our group has done so far. It has been a really exciting project for several reasons – we will be providing the area with a monument that is both beautiful and historically important; the ‘new’ stone will be a monument to both past peoples and today’s locals for the next thousand years.”
One of the most surprising discoveries during the design process was a lost pair of hippocamps, or classical sea-horses, that hadn’t been officially recorded before.
The stone is the only surviving Pictish sculpture featuring a wheeled vehicle – a chariot pulled by two horses.
Mr McGovern said: “The stone is one of the great early medieval monuments of Scotland but it’s very worn and damaged – it’s been in as many as eight pieces before – and there are areas where the design is clear, areas where the design is very worn and areas that are completely missing.
“Putting the whole design back together with all of its convoluted animals, humans, interlace and spirals has been a wonderful detective exercise. Now visitors can see what it might have looked like in the ninth century.”
The 2.7m-tall monument will be unveiled at a dedication ceremony at Morrison Park in Halkirk on Saturday, May 10, at 11.30am. The dedication will be undertaken by Bishop Mark Strange, the Episcopal Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness. Lord Thurso will cut the ribbon.
