Tomb - chest tomb, Cashel, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Tomb – chest tomb, Cashel, Co. Tipperary

Most visitors to Cashel keep their eyes trained upward, towards the dramatic silhouette of the Rock.

At ground level, just south of the south angle of St. John the Baptist and St. Patrick's Rock Cathedral of Ireland, something quieter and considerably older lies in the gravel kerb: a limestone chest tomb panel, worn and spalled in places, whose carved surface rewards close attention in a way that the stone's battered condition initially discourages.

The panel measures 1.88 metres long, 0.7 metres wide, and 0.2 metres thick, and its decorative scheme is organised into three scenes, each set within a round-headed arch defined by fluted columns. The central scene shows the Crucifixion, Christ on the cross flanked by two figures, with the cross itself resting on a skull and crossbones, a motif that was common in post-medieval funerary carving as a reminder of mortality. To one side, the so-called dexter frame, a heraldic term for the right-hand side as the viewer faces the panel, contains Arma Christi, the instruments of the Passion: a ladder, a spear, pincers, a hammer, a robe, and a scourging pillar. These objects, associated with the events of the Crucifixion, were a standard devotional repertoire in Irish and British tomb carving from the late medieval period onward. The opposite, sinister panel is badly eroded, though a cock remains legible beneath the apex of its arch, almost certainly a reference to Peter's denial of Christ. There are inscriptions between the scenes, though the one between the central and sinister panels has deteriorated to near illegibility. The cathedral itself stands on the site of a medieval church, and the graveyard surrounding it contains a number of significant monuments; this chest tomb is easy to pass without noticing, lying low and unannounced in the gravel beside the building's southern wall.

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