Graveslab, Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Tombs & Memorials
In the south-east corner of a graveyard in Ballymore Eustace, a small granite slab sits low in the ground, barely breaking the surface. It measures just twenty-five centimetres high and thirty-eight centimetres wide, the kind of stone that a visitor could easily step past without a second glance. What lifts it out of the ordinary is what has been cut into its eastern face: an incised Latin cross with expanded terminals, the arms flaring outward at their ends in a form found on early medieval Irish ecclesiastical stonework.
The slab is earthfast, meaning it is set directly into the ground rather than mounted on a base or incorporated into a larger structure, and it remains erect in that position. The cross type, a Latin cross with expanded or hollowed terminals, appears repeatedly across early Christian sites in Ireland and is generally associated with grave markers or commemorative slabs from the early medieval period, though the precise date of this particular example is not recorded. It is catalogued as Slab 8 in Corlett's 2003 survey of the area, which places it among a wider body of such stones in County Kildare.