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South Uist, Daliburgh, Cladh Hallan

Burial Ground (Medieval), Grave Slab (Medieval)

Site Name South Uist, Daliburgh, Cladh Hallan

Classification Burial Ground (Medieval), Grave Slab (Medieval)

Canmore ID 9860

Site Number NF72SW 14

NGR NF 7314 2194

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/9860

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Western Isles
  • Parish South Uist
  • Former Region Western Isles Islands Area
  • Former District Western Isles
  • Former County Inverness-shire

Activities

Field Visit (18 June 1915)

Carved Slab, Hallan Burying Ground

In the older and lower part of the graveyard at Hallan, to the north-west of Daliburgh , is a grave slab of dark blue schist, measuring 5 feet 7 inches in length, 15 inches in width at the top, and 12 inches at the bottom. A double flat moulding is cut round the edge of the stone, and the panel so formed, except about 5 inches at the top and bottom which are blank, is filled with an interlaced foliaceous design , the leaves being small. The ornamentation is badly weathered .- (See Muir's Ecclesiological Notes, p.281).

RCAHMS 1928, visited 18 June 1915.

Reference (2001)

NF72SW 14 7314 2194.

The machair and sand-dunes lying between Loch Hallan and the Atlantic shore of South Uist have produced extensive remains of middens and other evidence of early occupation, including wheelhouses and a dun (i). There are no remains of the medieval parish church at Cladh Pheadair (NF 7353 2048) (ii) but there are stones of early and late medieval date at Cladh Hallan, 1.5km to the N. The burial-ground is situated about 550m from the shore and occupies a large L-shaped enclosure which rises at the W to the summit of a sand-dune some 20m in height. Until the early years of the 20th century it was unenclosed, and the main area of burial was a roughly triangular piece of ground, now represented by a low mound in the NE angle where most of the older monuments are grouped. A smaller burial-ground, described in 1878 as 'not ancient', lay about 70m to the SW and appears to be included in the present enclosure (iii). A cross-marked gravemarker stands near the E wall, close to a graveslab of late medieval type (iv).

The cross-marked stone is an earthfast slab of gneiss, 0.67m in visible height by 0.49m and 0.15m thick. On the E face and to the right of centre there is incised a Latin cross, 0.23m in height and 0.12m in span. The surface is irregular and lichen-stained, but the terminals appear to be rounded and not expanded.

Footnotes:

(i) J Wedderspoon 1915, 327-30; RCAHMS 1928, Nos.405, 424; NMRS database NF72SW, nos.1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15 and 17.

(ii) RCAHMS 1928, No.414; NMRS database NF72SW 2. A lost charter of Robert I (RMS, 1 (1306-1424), appendix 1, no.9) refers to the parish of 'Kilpedre Blisen'.

(iii) J Wedderspoon 1915, 327; OS 6-inch map, Inverness-shire (Hebrides), sheet 55; Name Book, Inverness-shire (Hebrides), No.12, p.39.

(iv) RCAHMS 1928, No.368. The slab appears to be of chlorite-schist, and was presumably imported from Argyll.

(RCAHMS 1928, No.368).

I Fisher 2001, 108.

References

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