Graveslab, Monsea, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Monsea, Co. Tipperary

A small stone lying outside the southern wall of the ruined church at Monsea carries a detail easy to walk past without registering: a carved panel, roughly an inch square, bearing a rosette, four quatrefoils, and two sets of initials.

It is the kind of object that rewards a second look, partly because its identity is not entirely settled. It may be a graveslab, or it may be a fragment of a larger decorated stone; the question has not been resolved.

The stone came to light during a cleaning of the site and was described in 1951 by Gleeson, who noted that it had been found just outside the fifteenth-century south door of the church. The carved motifs include what Gleeson identified as a Tudor Rose, the stylised flower emblem associated with the English royal house of Tudor but widely adopted in decorative stonework during the sixteenth century. Alongside the rose, the initials "T.B." and "S.B." appear, and Gleeson connected both the rose and the letters to the Butler family, one of the most powerful Anglo-Norman dynasties in Tipperary and the wider province of Munster. A possible sixteenth-century date would sit comfortably within the period of Butler prominence in this part of Ireland. The quatrefoils, a four-lobed motif common in late medieval carving, add to the sense of a piece that once belonged to something more elaborate, whether a tomb chest, a memorial slab, or an architectural feature now lost.

A 3D model of the stone is available online at skfb.ly/owJxQ, which allows the carved surface to be examined in some detail without visiting the site.

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Pete F
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