Cross-slab, Carrowgilhooly, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Crosses & Monuments
For an unknown stretch of time, an early Christian carved stone lay underfoot in an ordinary farmhouse in Carrowgilhooly, Co. Sligo, doing quiet and undignified service as a floor flag.
Whoever laid it there may have known what it was, or may not have cared. Either way, a piece of early medieval stonework was pressed into domestic use and largely forgotten until it was lifted and moved to the farmyard, where it now sits in front of the sheds.
The slab is cut from a fine-grained reddish sandstone and is roughly rectangular, measuring just under a metre in length and about 63 centimetres wide. Both the top and left side have been broken, so the stone is incomplete. What survives, however, is the carving: a Maltese cross, a form characterised by four arms of equal length that flare outward at the tips, set within a circular band and worked in low relief near the top of the slab. The cross itself reaches a maximum diameter of 36 centimetres. Cross-slabs of this general type are associated with early Christian commemoration in Ireland, often marking graves or significant locations, though the precise original context of this particular stone is not recorded. The combination of the Maltese cross form and the encircling band is a design that appears across early medieval Irish stonework, giving the carving a broadly early Christian character even if a tighter date cannot be pinned to it.