Meigle Sculptured Stone Museum

The Meigle Sculptured Stone Museum is a permanent exhibition of 27 carved Pictish stones in the centre of the village of Meigle in eastern Scotland. It lies on the A94 road running from Coupar Angus to Forfar. The museum occupies the former parish school, built 1844. The collection of stones implies that an important church was located nearby, or perhaps a monastery. There is an early historical record of the work of Thana, son of Dudabrach, who was at Meigle (recorded as Migdele) in the middle of the 9th century during the reign of King Pherath. Thana was likely to have been a monk serving as a scribe in a local monastery that could have been founded in the 8th century. The stones contained in the museum were all found near Meigle, mostly in the neighbouring churchyard or used in the construction of the old church. The present church building dates to about 1870, the previous building having been destroyed in a fire on 28 March 1869. The stones are Christian monuments to the dead of the Pictish warrior aristocracy, who are depicted on the stones bearing their weapons or hunting.

The museum building was originally the village schoolhouse. The building was purchased by the local laird Sir George Kinloch towards the end of the 19th century in order to protect the symbol stones. In 1936 the museum passed into the ownership of the State, it was renovated after the Second World War and reopened to the public in 1949.

About one third of the stones in the museum are Class II in nature (stones with symbols carved in relief and usually bearing a Christian cross). Most of the stones date to the 9th or 10th century AD and were intended as tombstones. The stones are carved from the local sandstone, which is suitable for fine sculpture. Some stylistic elements of the stones show the influence of Northumbria. The Pictish stones at Meigle have a distinct local style that includes an emphasis on aggressive biting beasts, the decorating of crosses with a diagonal key pattern and the usage of rounded heads on cross-slabs.

The sandstone used to sculpt the monuments is old red sandstone, a relatively soft stone that lends itself to detailed carving but is susceptible to erosion. The monuments are likely to have been worked with iron tools such as chisels, punches and hammers, together with hammerstones and wooden mallets. The sculpted designs may have been copied from painted vellum pattern books.

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