Cross, Lugduff, Co. Wicklow

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross, Lugduff, Co. Wicklow

Inside the ruins of a church at Lugduff, in the Glendalough valley of County Wicklow, a small cross sits on a stone base slightly to the west of the building's centre.

It is an unassuming thing by any measure, less than a metre tall and barely four centimetres thick, yet its proportions are precise: the shaft and arms taper evenly, the overall outline is symmetrical, and whoever shaped it clearly knew what they were doing.

The cross is made from mica-schist, a locally available metamorphic rock that splits into thin sheets and has a faint, silvery sheen where the mineral flakes catch the light. According to a survey carried out by Patrick Healy for the Office of Public Works in 1972, the cross measures 0.88 metres high by 0.53 metres across. Healy recorded it as part of a broader supplementary survey of ancient monuments at Glendalough, the early medieval monastic site founded, by tradition, by St Kevin in the sixth century. Lugduff sits within that wider complex of ecclesiastical remains scattered through the valley and its upper corries, many of them still poorly understood. The church in which the cross stands is itself a separate recorded monument, and the cross's placement within the interior, rather than outside as a boundary or grave marker, hints at a devotional or liturgical function, though no inscription or iconographic detail is recorded to clarify its original purpose.

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