Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

Three medieval graveslabs in the graveyard of Fethard's Augustinian abbey have been arranged on their edges to create the shape of a chest tomb, a form of raised box-like monument common in late medieval Irish ecclesiastical settings.

One of those slabs, positioned on its side facing east under an arch in the east wall of the north transept, carries a carved seven-armed segmental cross in relief, with cross-bands at both the base of the cross-head and the base of the shaft, the latter resting on what appears to be a pillar-base form. Part of its decorated border is buried in the ground, and the Black Letter inscription along the left edge and base of the slab is only legible from one side.

That inscription, partially damaged but decipherable, records the burial of Thomas, son of Edmund le Butler and Johanna, daughter of Dermot O'Mulryan, and dates to 1524. The Butlers were one of the dominant Anglo-Norman dynasties in Munster and Leinster, their name derived from the hereditary office of chief butler of Ireland, and a connection between a Butler and an O'Mulryan, a Tipperary Gaelic family, is a small material trace of the intermarriage that characterised the region's late medieval aristocracy. Knowles identified and translated the inscription in 1903, and Maher described the carved cross in detail in 1997, together building up a picture of a slab that, despite its awkward repositioning and partial burial, preserves a legible family record from the early sixteenth century.

The slab sits within the abbey graveyard, accessible in the town of Fethard, and is worth examining slowly. The inscription requires some patience, visible only from the left-hand side and across the base, and the carved relief of the cross is easier to read in low or raking light, which picks out the cross-bands and pillar-base detail that might otherwise flatten into the stone.

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