Graveslab, Burgagery-Lands, Co. Tipperary

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Burgagery-Lands, Co. Tipperary

In the south wall of St. Mary's church in Burgagery-Lands, a medieval graveslab has spent roughly two centuries pretending to be something else entirely.

Rather than lying flat over a grave or standing as a memorial, this 1.2-metre sandstone slab was pressed into service as a window jamb, the vertical side-piece framing a 19th-century window opening. More striking still, whoever put it there took the trouble to score two horizontal lines across its face, creating the illusion that the jamb was made from three separate stones rather than one repurposed grave marker.

The slab itself dates from the 13th or 14th century, a period when incised grave slabs, flat stones carved with decorative crosses, were among the most common ways of marking a burial of any significance in Ireland. This one carries a cross with a lozenge-shaped head, meaning the top of the cross widens into a diamond form, with trefoil terminals, three-lobed leaf shapes finishing each arm. The shaft has a knop, a small decorative knob or boss where the shaft broadens slightly, and the whole design would have been cleanly legible against the pale sandstone when it was first cut. The base of the slab has since been broken off, so the full original length is lost. By the time the 19th-century window was inserted into the south wall, the slab had evidently lost its funerary context and was treated as convenient building material, though whoever dressed it for its new role clearly wanted the finished wall to look tidy and deliberate rather than improvised.

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