Graveslab (present location), Leggetsrath, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab (present location), Leggetsrath, Co. Kilkenny

In an Office of Public Works storage depot in Kilkenny, a medieval graveslab sits in careful obscurity, removed from the church it once marked and now catalogued as a piece of stonework awaiting some future context.

It is a tapering limestone slab, about 1.3 metres of it surviving, the lower portion lost entirely. What remains is polished to a high finish on all surfaces, which is itself unusual, suggesting it was once a piece of considerable quality. Along one face runs a raised cross, its arms and shaft badly spalled, meaning the stone surface has flaked and broken away over time, but the design is still legible: a cross with fleur-de-lys terminals, the ends of each arm blooming into the three-lobed form borrowed from heraldry, and a knop, a small rounded protrusion, set along the vertical shaft. The upper portion carries cracks as well, and the geometry of the slab is asymmetrical, chamfered on the top and one side, straight on the other.

The slab originated at St Mary's, the medieval parish church in Kilkenny city. On stylistic grounds it has been dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, placing it in the period when Kilkenny was developing as one of the most significant urban centres in medieval Ireland, its stone-carving workshops producing work that drew on broader European Gothic conventions. The fleur-de-lys terminal was a common decorative choice for grave markers of that period, appearing across Ireland and Britain, though the quality of finish here points to a commission of some standing. At some point the slab was separated from its original setting and eventually entered the OPW's Kilkenny depot, where it is recorded under stone carving number KD042.

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