Cross-slab, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

A stone slab roughly ninety centimetres tall, its carved face turned quietly toward the southeast, was found propped in the fence of a field on Inishkea North off the Mayo coast, apparently doing duty as a boundary marker.

It is no longer there. The slab has since been removed to the National Museum of Ireland, leaving the windswept island without one of its more singular early medieval artefacts.

The scholar Françoise Henry documented the slab in 1945, identifying it among a group of carved stones associated with the early Christian site near St. Columba's Church on the south-western side of the island. Its precise original position is not certain, though it appears to have stood downslope and to the south-east of the church. What Henry recorded is a cross whose arms end in terminals that expand into paired single-turn spirals, a decorative form that belongs to a tradition of insular stoneworking in which abstract geometric ornament carries considerable visual weight without the need for figural imagery. Below the lower arm, the shaft continues and finishes in an identical spiral terminal, giving the whole composition a satisfying vertical symmetry. The design occupies only the upper half of the slab, leaving the lower portion plain, which may reflect the practical expectation that the stone would be set into the ground. Cross-slabs of this kind, flat stones incised or carved with a cross rather than shaped into a freestanding monument, are found at early monastic and ecclesiastical sites across Ireland, and the spiral terminals link this example to a broader artistic vocabulary that flourished roughly between the sixth and ninth centuries, though a tighter date for this particular piece is not established in the available record.

Inishkea North is an uninhabited island, and the church site itself remains on the south-western shore, but the carved slab that Henry found leaning in a field fence is now held in Dublin. Anyone wishing to examine the carving closely would need to seek it out through the National Museum rather than make the Atlantic crossing.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Cross-slab, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement