Tomb - effigial, Dungarvan, Co. Kilkenny

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Tombs & Memorials

Tomb – effigial, Dungarvan, Co. Kilkenny

In the graveyard of a medieval church in Dungarvan, County Kilkenny, a heavily damaged altar-tomb lies partly sunken into the ground, its covering slab broken across and several pieces missing entirely.

What survives is remarkable for what it tells us, not just about the people buried beneath it, but about the craftsman who made it. Carved along the front panel, in Latin, is the mason's own signature: "Par me Water keren, mason, 158" — that is, "By me Walter Kerin, mason, 158-" — with the final digit now broken away. The practice of a stonemason signing his work was not unknown in late medieval Ireland, but it remains uncommon enough to make this tomb something genuinely out of the ordinary.

The tomb was made for Donald mcPierce Archdekin, also known as Cody, of Dungarvan, described in the Latin inscription running around the slab's edge as a nobleman and lord of surrounding lands. His wife, Catherine Blanchville, is buried alongside him, though the dates of death for both were left uncut, suggesting the tomb may have been prepared in advance of their deaths, or that the finishing work was never completed. Writing in 1905, the historian Carrigan described the monument as an altar-tomb, the type being a chest-shaped structure with a flat top slab bearing effigies, here showing a man in full armour, "armed cap-a-pie" as Carrigan put it, and a woman in a horned head-dress, a style fashionable in the later medieval period. The front panel is densely carved with the Arma Christi, the emblems associated with the Passion of Christ: a scourging pillar with rope, two scourges, a spear, a ladder, three dice, a pierced heart ringed with a crown of thorns, a hammer, pincers, nails, a sponge on a pole, a seamless garment, a jar of ointment, and a pot. The east end panel bears a heraldic shield with a saltire ermine impaling a chief indented. Walter Kerin is now known to scholars as part of a distinct regional tradition; Phelan's 1996 study identified an "O'Kerin school" of monumental sculpture active across Ossory and its surroundings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and this tomb represents one of its signed examples.

The tomb remains in its original position, where it once stood along the south wall inside the church itself. The church is now roofless and the structure has settled further into the earth over the centuries, but enough of the carving survives to reward a careful look.

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