Graveslab, Moorstown, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Moorstown, Co. Tipperary

Inside the ruined Mora church at Moorstown, a broken slab of stone lies on the floor of the chancel, roughly a metre from the north and west walls of the crossing-tower.

It is easy to overlook: cracked, plain, its upper surface carrying no legible inscription or decoration. Yet it is a graveslab, almost certainly medieval, and it is not alone. Four such slabs have been recorded within or immediately outside the church, and together they suggest that this quiet, largely unvisited ruin was once a site of some commemorative significance.

The slab itself is the upper portion of a tapered stone, wider at the head than the foot, measuring just over half a metre across at its broadest point and surviving to a length of 0.8 metres. A slight chamfer, a narrow angled edge bevelled along the surface rim, gives it a modest refinement, while the underside is left very roughly cut, as was typical for stones intended to lie flat rather than stand upright. What makes its date plausible, even without a surviving inscription, is its close resemblance in shape and style to a neighbouring slab that does carry lettering: a Lombardic inscription, meaning it uses the rounded, block-like script common in western European stonework of the 13th and 14th centuries. Three further slabs of comparable form have been found in the same vicinity, and all are thought to belong to the same broad period. Lombardic lettering was widely used on Irish grave monuments from the late 13th century onward, and its presence on the adjacent stone anchors this small cluster of memorials to the medieval era with reasonable confidence.

Mora church itself is a modest structure, and the graveslabs lie exposed on the interior surface, open to the elements and to the slow processes that have already cracked and broken this one. Visitors should expect a roofless shell rather than a preserved interior, and should look carefully at floor level, where the slabs sit among the general debris of a long-abandoned building.

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Pete F
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