Kilmartin Grave Slabs 🏴🪦 There are 23 stones on view in the lapidarium. They are all graveslabs, with the single exception of the stone displayed horizontally above the door, which started life as the side slab of a tomb chest. The stones are arrayed in date order, starting immediately to the left of the door with stones from the 1200s and working round in a clockwise direction to two immediately to the right of the doorway, when viewed as you enter, which carry carved dates of 1707 and 1712. As with the stones in the Poltalloch Enclosure, two decorative themes are predominant. Many of them carry depictions of swords, and others have figures of knights. Most of the latter are fairly small in size and set within decorative panels. The exception is a truly magnificent warrior on the far wall as you enter the aisle. He is life size and carved in very high relief. The fine detail of the carving has weathered considerably over the ages, and there is nothing left of the features of the face or detail of armour that would once have been present. Slightly unexpectedly, the warrior does carry a name: carved across his upper chest is a decorative squiggle, with below it the name "McTavish" plus perhaps another letter after the name. Given that this carving is much finer than detail that has been weathered away elsewhere on the figure, we strongly suspect that the name was added long after the stone was originally carved. This might have been as a guess as to whose grave it might mark: or perhaps to identify the person who decided to reuse the stone to mark their own grave, something that did happen until the Victorian era. This same fate appears to have befallen the stone carrying a high relief decorative pattern standing against the far wall next to the figure of the warrior. A strip up the lower right hand side of the pattern has been carved away, to allow "John Lammont" to reuse the stone long after it was originally carved. #scotland #history #foryou #braveheart #outlander #visitscotland #knight #gravestone