Graveslab, Town Parks, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Town Parks, Co. Tipperary

Built into the inner face of a boundary wall on the west side of a Co. Tipperary town, there is a fragment of limestone that once marked someone's grave.

It measures roughly 55 by 45 centimetres, and across its surface runs a partial Latin inscription in Black Letter script, the angular, heavily stylised lettering common to medieval stonework. What survives of the text reads: SSORTEELUI, with the remainder long since lost. Whoever was commemorated here, their name and identity have dissolved into the gap between those trailing letters and the broken edge of the stone.

The slab is a remnant of the medieval church of St. Nicholas of Myra, a dedication to the same fourth-century bishop of Myra whose cult spread widely across medieval Europe and who is perhaps best known today in a rather different guise. The church appears to have stood until around 1813, when it was demolished and replaced by a Church of Ireland building on or near the same site. At some point in that process of clearance and rebuilding, the graveslab was not discarded but incorporated into the new wall, face inward, where it has remained. Alongside the inscription, the stone carries a shallow rectangular groove measuring approximately 21 by 4 centimetres, the purpose of which is not recorded. Such grooves occasionally appear on medieval grave slabs in Ireland, though their function is debated.

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