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National Museum of Scotland (Herdmanston Stoup), Edinburgh, Midlothian (see also: Herdmanston)

Location
(55°56′45″N, 3°11′28″W)
Edinburgh
NT 257 732
pre-1975 traditional (Scotland) Midlothian
now City of Edinburgh
  • James King
7 February 2012

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Feature Sets
Description

Until the mid-20thc., the stoup was found placed against the N wall of the only surviving section of a chapel built in the 13thc. for the Sinclair family. There is no record known of how and when the stoup made its way into this building. In the mid-1950s, the stoup was given to the National Museum of Scotland, where it remains.

Features

Loose Sculpture

Comments/Opinions

There is nothing surviving to suggest an ecclesiastical building on the site of the Herdmanston Chapel before the 13thc. This suggests the stoup came from another building, but there is nothing to help determine where that was. Stylisically, the stoup, itself, is likely to date from either the 2nd or 3rd quarters of the 12thc., but the carved areas are too common in form to determine a more specific date.

Bibliography

R. Fawcett, Scottish Medieval Churches (Stroud, 2002), 276-7.

D. MacGibbon and T. Ross, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Scotland, I (Edinburgh, 1896), 385-7.

C. McWilliam, The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian (Harmondsworth, 1978), 201.

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 89 (Session 1955-56) (Edinburgh 1958), 460 no. 29.

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 21 (Session 1886-87) (Edinburgh 1887), 377 and 380-81.

RCAHMS, Inventory of Monuments in East Lothian (Edinburgh 1924) 106-7.