Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Tombs & Memorials
Set into the floor of the south aisle of Holy Trinity Church of Ireland in Fethard, a small limestone graveslab carries two inscriptions from entirely different eras, one medieval and one considerably more recent, and only one of them was ever meant to be there.
The slab is modest in size, tapering from roughly 38 centimetres wide at the top to 23 centimetres at the base, and just over a metre in length. What makes it quietly arresting is the layering of intention: a carefully composed medieval design, now worn, and a later hand that decided the stone needed a name.
The original decoration, as described by Maher in 1997, consists of an encircled cross-head featuring three partially surviving pennanular interlocking circles. Pennanular simply means almost circular, open at one point, and the interlocking arrangement here recalls the kind of intricate ring-work found across medieval Irish ecclesiastical carving. A simple trefoil, a three-lobed leaf shape, appears at the base of the cross-stem, and a groove defines the outer edges of the slab. There is no evidence that the medieval carver ever included any lettering. The second inscription is therefore an intrusion, incised in Roman capitals across the base of the cross-head at some unknown later point, and it reads: MEARY CONNELL. The phonetic spelling of Mary suggests someone working without formal literacy, or simply recording a name as it sounded to them, which gives the addition a slightly different character to the confident stonecutting around it.
The church itself is the medieval parish church of St John the Baptist, a building with a long history of use that eventually passed into Church of Ireland hands as Holy Trinity. The graveslab remains in situ on the floor of the south aisle, walked over or past by visitors who may not immediately register what lies beneath their feet.