Our Claymore Stone

In the Autumn of 2024, several of our Medieval and Post-Medieval grave-slabs were uncovered by person or persons unknown. Perhaps it was someone searching for an ancestor or interested in photographing old memorials. However, uncovering these stones without permission, while tempting, may cause damage and increase the effects of weathering. There are a lot of former Balquhidder residents resting beneath the grass and some of our grave-slabs were re-used, often more than once. A grave-slab that might look old could actually be commemorating someone who has family members alive today.

The first grave-slab to be uncovered by our unknown visitor(s) was our claymore stone, which you can see in the photographs above and below. Claymores, Gaelic claidheamh-mòr or “big sword” are found on Highland grave-slabs and are useful dating tools for historians and archaeologists. While we do not always get precise dates as to when Claymore grave-slabs were laid, we do know that by the Battle of Killiecrankie (1689), the use of these mighty two-handed swords was fading into history.

Balquhidder Claymore grave-slab uncovered by person unknown, October 2024. Credit: Elaine Black

Two-handed claymore Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Balquhidder Church and the wider glen community is committed to enhancing the experience of visitors to the Old Kirk and its graveyard, and we realised that we could do more to share information on our carved stones, glimpsed under moss and turf. These stones include eleven medieval grave-slabs with carvings of crosses, swords and shears, and our earliest known memorial to have a date on it, of 1663. While some of the grave-slabs have been photographed and recorded for the national archive (click here to see them), there is an opportunity to apply photogrammetry or 3D modelling which may reveal traces of initials, dates or other carvings invisible to the naked eye. This old graveyard may yet have more to tell us about the people who came before us.

And the name of the survey? Well, that was easy, welcome to the Balquhidder Graveyard Claymore Project.