Picts at Portsoy

Portsoy is a coastal village in the east of Banffshire.

The 1922 edition of The Antiquaries Journal states that the then owner Capt. G.P. Crowden said that it was probably found in Portsoy by his father Mr J.T. Crowden M.d.

The stone is now in the British Museum collection, but is not currently on display.

The stone is dated to the 7th to 8th century, and identified variously as a whetstone or a practice piece, on the British Museum website.

Image from the British Museum

© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

On one side are carved and inscribed, two faces. also inscribed is a fish, tongs and crucible, a cross or sword and a number of arches. On the reverse is inscribed a fish.

A local stone carver and fishermen , confirmed that the stone is available in Portsoy and that the fish is likely to be a salmon.

sources

OS record card on trove.scot

The Antiquaries Journal (1922)

British Museum website

Portsoy stone carver and fishermen.

Version 1.1 Text amended