The Lewis Chessmen by David H. Caldwell Page B

good soil and access from the sea. There is the site of a medieval church with a burial ground and, adjacent to the spot marked on Ordnance Survey maps as the site of the nunnery, the sea is weathering out midden deposits from which a bronze finger ring was recovered a number of years ago and awarded as Treasure Trove to Museum nan Eilean in Stornoway. The ring is engraved with crosses and dates to the twelfth or thirteenth century.
    All this suggests that Mèalasta is to be preferred to the sands of Uig Strand as the hoard’s find-spot. However, there is one further source that backs this up. When the Ordnance Surveymapped the Parish of Uig in 1852-53 for the first time, they noted in their ‘Name Book’ that chessmen, which were sold to ‘a society of antiquaries in Edinburgh’, were found in the ruins of a nunnery about seventy years previously. Nothing then remained of it but the site. Not only does this appear to verify the information supplied through Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, it also raises the interesting possibility that some or all of the chessmen could originally have been discovered in the 1780s. It is not beyond the bounds of likelihood that pieces from the hoard could have remained in a local house or barn for fifty years, their value and interest unappreciated until a travelling merchant – Roderick Ririe even? – saw them and spotted a chance to make some money. Might it even be the case that the story of the nunnery was created on the back of the discovery of the chessmen? That, of course, is speculation, but Mèalasta may yet have a lot to tell us.

    3. MÈALASTA (Source: © Stuart Campbell)

    * J. R. C. Hamilton: Excavations at Jarlshof, Shetland (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1956), p. 76 and pl. XIIIb.

The Contents of the Hoard
    R ODERICK Ririe brought 93 ivory pieces to Edinburgh in 1831 [ Figs 4.1-63 ]. These included a buckle, decorated with foliage designs, that may have fastened a leather or textile bag containing the rest of the hoard. While ivory can survive well in the ground over hundreds of years, it takes very special circumstances, normally permanent water-logging, for cloth or leather to remain intact for any length of time. There are also 14 plain disks, about 55 to 60 millimetres in diameter, which are clearly men for playing a board game. The remaining 78 pieces can readily be identified as chessmen, including kings, queens, bishops, knights, warders (equivalent to rooks today) and pawns. All but the pawns are figurative, that is modelled in considerable detail as humans with appropriate clothing and equipment. These face-pieces vary in height from 70 to 103 millimetres, and the pawns from 40 to 59 millimetres. While the detailing of the face-pieces is realistic, they are not in true human proportions but have comparatively large heads and clothing to the ground to create broad steady bases for ease of play.

    The most economical explanation for this group of 78 is that they represent the remains of four chess sets, each, then as now, containing two sides with a king, a queen, two bishops, two knights, two warders/rooks and eight pawns. In that casethe missing pieces are a knight, four warders and 44 pawns. Perhaps they were hidden away with the rest, but were too fragmentary to be recovered. Those that were recovered vary considerably from near perfect to ones which are cracked and have bits missing. Despite early reports that some bore traces of staining, presumably so that a red side could be distinguished from a white side, scientific analyses in recent times have so far failed to identify any substance that could have been used to colour them. It would be possible, however, to group them into four sets on the basis of size alone. Altogether, with the missing pieces and some more tables-men, the hoard could have weighed as much as 1.5 kilograms and have occupied a box or bag about 200 by 350 by 250 millimetres.
    4.1-4.63 THE LEWIS HOARD OF GAMING PIECES