Carved stone

This stone was probably carved between 1,000 and 1,200 years ago. It may have been a grave stone. This slab of greywacke sandstone is decorated with a flower design. It was found at Craigdhu, Glasserton in the 1950s by the tenant Mr Hugh Telfer. He was repairing a dry stone dyke when he noticed that one of the through stones - long stones used to stabilise the wall - had a pattern carved on one face. Mr Telfer thought the stone might be of some interest and put it to one side. When he retired to Girvan he took the stone with him. In 2004 the stone was shown to Ian Jones of the McKechnie Insitute in Girvan who then informed Stranraer Museum. Mr Telfer, alerted to the stone's possible importance, kindly agreed to donate it to the museum. The stone is decorated with a series of compass-drawn arcs that form a six-petalled flower or marigold design. It is very hard to put a date on a simple carving like this and it may be fairly modern. But a number of stones with very similar carved marigold designs were found during the recent archaeological excavations at Whithorn which the archaeologists thought were carved during the eighth or ninth centuries AD. The Craigdhu slab might originally have been a grave marker. Was there a small cemetery here during the Dark Ages?