Hunting Picts

The Drosten stone – one of Scotland’s premier monuments – came to light during restoration work at St Vigeans Church, near Arbroath, in the 1870s. A rare example of Pictish writing, the Drosten stone is just one in an astounding collection of exquisitely preserved Pictish sculptures discovered in and around the church.

These carved stones revel in Pictish inventiveness, teeming with lively animals, monsters and people, as well as Pictish symbols and everyday objects. The sculptures’ iconography also draws on Christian and classical literature, witness to a highly literate and cosmopolitan society.

This definitive study of St Vigeans’ Pictish stones, illustrated with plates of the full collection, begins in the recent past, when the sculptures began to emerge as a remarkable historic entity. The background of the sculptures is then explored, including an analysis of the carvings, the geology of the stones and attempts to extract meaning and context for this unique stone collection as part of a powerful ecclesiastical landscape.