Cross-inscribed stone (present location), Lullymore, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Crosses & Monuments
A small fragment of sandstone, barely twenty centimetres in either dimension, sits at a 1798 memorial in Lullymore West, Co. Kildare. On its surface is a lightly incised single line terminating in a small circular loop, the kind of mark that, in early medieval Ireland, indicated a cross. The fragment is easy to overlook, particularly in the company of the other stones gathered around the same memorial, but it belongs to a much older world than the one the monument was built to commemorate.
The stone is one of at least seven cross-inscribed stones, and two fully formed crosses, that were moved from the early ecclesiastical site at Lullymore East and reused in the construction of the nearby 1798 memorial. Cross-inscribed stones are among the most common survivals from early Irish monasticism, typically flat slabs or boulders bearing incised crosses that may have marked graves, defined sacred boundaries, or served as focal points for prayer. The particular fragment described here was catalogued by researcher M. Kelly as "Cross 10" in a 2006 publication. Its original position was somewhere within the early monastic enclosure at Lullymore East, a site whose full extent and history remain only partially understood. A further cross-inscribed stone from the same broader complex was removed to the Bog of Allen Nature Centre Museum in the adjoining area, meaning that what was once a coherent collection of early Christian stonework is now distributed across at least two separate locations, folded into commemorations and collections that postdate it by a thousand years or more.
