Graveslab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

On the island of Inis Cealtra in Lough Derg, within a graveyard known as the Saint's graveyard, lies a plain stone slab that managed to slip through the cracks of early twentieth-century scholarship.

It was drawn, carefully enough, on the archaeologist R.A.S. Macalister's plan of the graveyard sometime around 1916 to 1917, yet it was never assigned a number in his catalogue. It exists, in other words, as a recorded absence, noted but not named.

The slab itself is recumbent, meaning it lies flat rather than standing upright, and measures 1.56 metres in length and 0.49 metres in width. There is no carving on it, no inscription, no decoration of any kind. Its surface is uneven, marked only by natural striations in the stone itself. It sits in the eastern half of the graveyard, positioned 8.46 metres from the northern wall and 2.2 metres from the eastern wall, coordinates that give it a precise location within a space associated with early Christian monastic life on this island in the Clare portion of Lough Derg. Inis Cealtra, sometimes called Holy Island, was a significant ecclesiastical site from at least the early medieval period, and the Saint's graveyard is understood to be among its oldest burial areas. That this particular slab carries no identifying marks makes it quietly difficult to place in any narrative, which is perhaps what makes it worth noticing.

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