The Hilton of Cadboll Stone: A Pictish Masterpiece Split Between Edinburgh and Easter Ross

Why it matters

The Hilton of Cadboll Stone is one of the masterpieces of Pictish art, and one of the most fought-over objects in Scotland. Carved around AD 800 on the Tarbat peninsula in Easter Ross, it was defaced by Reformers, recycled as a gravestone, carted off to a castle garden, given away to the British Museum, rescued for Scotland, and finally, centuries later, reunited in part with its missing base dug out of the ground where it once stood. It now exists in three places at once: the original upper slab in Edinburgh, the recovered lower section in the village, and a new full-size carving back on the site.

The carving

The surviving face is framed by a flowing vine-scroll border. Inside are three panels: a crescent and V-rod surrounded by knotwork; the famous hunting scene; and a panel of spiralling triskele scrollwork. In the hunt, a rider sits side-saddle, wearing a large brooch, with a mirror and comb beside her, while horsemen, trumpeters and hounds chase a deer. She was long read as a Pictish noblewoman. More recent studies see the scene as religious, echoing the Roman ceremony of a ruler’s arrival, with the rider standing for Christ or the Virgin and the hunted deer for the soul in Psalm 42. The front once had a great cross, now almost entirely lost.

A stone with a turbulent life

• Late 1500s: after the Reformation, the cross on the front begins to be defaced.
• 1674: the slab falls in a storm. The remains of the cross are cut away and a memorial to Alexander Duff and his three wives is carved in its place.
• Late 1860s: the Macleods of Cadboll move the top three-quarters of the slab to the garden of Invergordon Castle.
• 1921: after the estate is sold, the stone is given to the British Museum. Scottish antiquaries protest, and it is given instead to the National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh, now the National Museum of Scotland.
• 1998–2001: excavations at the chapel site recover many carved fragments and the missing lower portion of the slab, still in the ground.
• 2000s: after a local campaign to bring the original home fails, the sculptor Barry Grove carves a full-size reconstruction, set up near the original position.

Seeing it

The reconstruction stands beside the grassy remains of the medieval chapel at Hilton of Cadboll, just north of Balintore on the east coast of the Tarbat peninsula; it is free and always open. The recovered lower section is displayed locally on the peninsula. The original upper slab is in the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street in Edinburgh, where entry is free.

The Tarbat peninsula is full of Pictish carving. The nearby Shandwick Stone still stands on its hill above the village, and Nigg Old Church shelters the Nigg cross-slab. At Portmahomack, at the tip of the peninsula, the Tarbat Discovery Centre tells the story of the Pictish monastery found there. The same carving tradition reached south to Angus, where the cross-slab at Aberlemno has a hunting scene very like this one.

Around the Tarbat peninsula

Inland at Fearn, Toulvaddie is Scotland’s first distillery founded by a woman. Across the Dornoch Firth at Tain, Glenmorangie is one of the best-known single malts in the world, and a few miles further west, Balblair at Edderton is one of the oldest working distilleries in Scotland. The peninsula was Ross country, and its church at Tarbat gave its name to the Battle of Tarbat, a bloody clan fight of the 1480s. Over the Dornoch Firth bridge, the town of Dornoch keeps its own grim stone, the Witch’s Stone. For the distilleries of the whole firth, follow our Easter Ross whisky trail. For more stones with a story, see our guide to the famous stones of Scotland.

Sources

• National Museums Scotland — the Hilton of Cadboll Stone.
• Historic Environment Scotland — Hilton of Cadboll Chapel and excavation reports (1998–2001).
• Heather James, Sally Foster and others, A Fragmented Masterpiece: Recovering the Biography of the Hilton of Cadboll Pictish Cross-Slab (Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2008).