BGCP_WindowSill

Balquhidder Old Kirk

Site grid ref: 34.00/24.10

Fisher 1996, stone l; RCAHMS Balquhidder no. 9 slab here 

Photogrammetry here

A sandstone windowsill on the south side of the old church has a small incised linear cross and other incised markings. The ogee-arched window is 0.9 m wide, and the sill is 1.33 m long by 0.42 m wide and 0.13 m deep.

The slightly uneven cross, the centre of which lies 0.2 m from the western side of the window, comprises lines of 130 mm (E–W) and 90 mm (N–S) intersecting at a near right angle. 

There are two other groups of lines. One comprises six unevenly spaced lines, between 30 mm and 170 mm long, running approximately NW–SE on the eastern side of the cross. The other comprises up to eleven lines, most of them quite evenly spaced, spread over 0.4 m, running almost N–S and near perpendicular to the outer edge of the sill. Much of that edge, however, has been damaged in the past, and the lines appear to have been truncated. If they originally ran up to the edge they would have been between 40 mm and 130 mm in length. One possibility is that these lines are the remains of an ogham inscription, potentially of 5th-9th century date, deliberately incorporated in the fabric of the 17th-century Old Kirk.