Graveslab, Burgagery-Lands, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Tombs & Memorials
A graveslab with seven arms sounds like a contradiction in terms, and yet that is precisely what lies north of St. Mary's church in Burgagery-Lands, County Tipperary.
Flat on the ground, a tapered limestone slab just under two metres long bears a segmental cross carved in relief, each of its seven arms finishing in a fleur-de-lis. A segmental cross is one whose arms curve outward rather than meeting in sharp angles, giving it a softer, almost organic outline. The fleur-de-lis terminals add a layer of deliberate ornament, suggesting this was no ordinary burial marker but something commissioned with care and some expense.
The slab lies roughly eight and a half metres north of the north-east angle of St. Michael's chapel, which itself sits within the wider complex around St. Mary's church. Its precise dimensions are recorded: 1.87 metres in length, tapering from 0.91 metres wide at the head to 0.82 metres at the foot, and only 0.12 metres thick. That relative thinness may partly explain its condition. The surface is badly worn and partially spalled, meaning sections of the stone face have flaked away, and erosion has erased whatever decoration once covered the lower portion entirely. A plain raised margin, about ten centimetres wide, survives around the upper part of the slab. No inscription or date remains legible, so the identity of whoever lies beneath it, and the century in which this was made, are both lost. The seven-armed design is unusual enough to suggest a particular workshop tradition or patron preference, but without further context the question stays open.