Cross, Glebe, Co. Longford
Co. Longford |
Crosses & Monuments
Cemented to the top of a graveyard wall in Glebe, County Longford, sits a fragment of stonework that raises more questions than it answers.
What remains is the lower portion of what was probably a cross shaft, and it has been fixed in place beside the stile at the graveyard entrance, repurposed as a kind of architectural curiosity rather than any kind of monument. It is easy to walk past without a second glance, and that is precisely what makes it worth a closer look.
The shaft is octagonal in plan, measuring 0.48 metres high, 0.37 metres wide, and 0.27 metres thick. Its sides are chamfered, meaning they are cut at an angle to soften the edges, and these chamfers terminate at four bull-nose chamfer stops, rounded finishes that would have been a deliberate decorative choice by the mason. A small tenon, a projecting peg of stone, protrudes from the top, indicating that the shaft once supported something above it, almost certainly the cross head that has since been lost entirely. The style and detailing suggest it was carved in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century, a period when such wayside and ecclesiastical crosses were still being produced across Ireland before the disruptions of the later plantations and religious upheaval curtailed that tradition. Whether it originally stood in or near the graveyard, or was brought there from somewhere else and cemented into the wall at a later point, is not recorded.
