Camus Cross

The Camus Cross is currently thought to be a late Pictish/early Gaelic era monument, dating from the 10th century. The earliest record of it is in a legal document of 1481, describing the boundary of the lands of Camuston, owned by Sir Thomas Maule, and the barony of Downy, owned by the Earl of Crawford. The boundary was described as running "a magna cruce lapidea de Cambiston" ('from the great stone cross of Camuston'). It was mentioned in the context of the Battle of Barry in Hector Boece's Historia Gentis Scotorum in 1527, and first described in detail by the antiquarian Robert Maule, who erected it at its present position in 1620, after moving it six feet to centralise it within the…

The freestanding cross is carved from Old Red Sandstone and stands 2 m high, approximately 0.6 m wide at the base, 0.8 m wide at the arms, and approximately 0.2 m thick. It stands on a low earth mound, 7.5 m wide (east to west), 4.5 m wide (north to south) and 1 m high, in the centre of the Camuston Wood avenue, facing east to west. All faces and sides are sculpted. The cross has suffered significant weathering, most notably on the west face, which has obscured some of the designs. The stone bears no idiomatic Pictish symbols and, under J Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson's classification system, it is a class III stone. Intact freestanding crosses of this age are comparatively rare,…