Sarcophagus, Glebe, Co. Waterford

Co. Waterford |

Tombs & Memorials

Sarcophagus, Glebe, Co. Waterford

In the graveyard attached to Kilrush church in Glebe, County Waterford, there is a sandstone block that was never quite finished. Standing 1.2 metres high and roughly a third of a metre wide, it functions today as a grave-marker, but its eastern face has been partially hollowed out in a way that suggests something else was originally intended. The hollowing is incomplete, abandoned at some stage before whatever form the carver had in mind could be realised.

The object is classified as a sarcophagus, a term that in this context refers not to a complete stone coffin but to a type of early medieval grave monument in which the body, or a carved representation of one, was enclosed or outlined within the stone itself. The hollowed recess on the eastern face is the defining feature of this type, and the fact that the work was never completed makes this example particularly unusual. Whether the stone was quarried and shaped elsewhere before being brought to the site, or worked in situ and then abandoned, is not recorded. What remains is a sandstone block that sits somewhere between raw material and finished monument, pressed into service as a grave-marker in the interim, or perhaps permanently.

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