Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

In the graveyard of Fethard's Augustinian abbey, leaning against the outer eastern wall of the north transept, there is a medieval graveslab that has almost finished keeping its secrets.

The inscription carved into its surface was never meant to fade, but centuries of exposure have reduced an entire text to a single readable detail: a date, tentatively read as 1508. Everything else, the name of whoever lies beneath, whatever words were chosen to mark their passing, has worn past recovery.

The slab itself is substantial, rising 1.33 metres above the ground and measuring 0.86 metres across, with the lower portion still buried. Its edges are chamfered, one side with a narrow straight chamfer and the other with a wider undercut chamfer, a technique that gives the stone a slightly refined, finished quality consistent with the work of a skilled mason. The decorated face carries a seven-armed segmental cross in relief, its terminals formed into fleur-de-lis, a motif common in late medieval ecclesiastical stonework across Ireland. Two cross-bands sit at the junction of the cross-head and shaft. Running along the right-hand border and into the space between that border and the shaft, an inscription was laid out in Black Letter, the angular, densely upright script used across western Europe from the twelfth century onward. Only the Roman numerals for what is likely 1508 remain legible. The Augustinian friary at Fethard was an active religious community by this period, and the graveyard around it would have served both the friars and prominent local families seeking burial in consecrated ground close to a religious house.

The slab stands in the open air against the abbey wall, which means the fading of its surface continues unchecked. What is visible now, the cross, the fleur-de-lis terminals, the ghostly margin of Black Letter script, may be less visible in another century.

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