Inscribed stone, Glaslough, Co. Monaghan

Co. Monaghan |

Stone Monuments

Inscribed stone, Glaslough, Co. Monaghan

High on the outer face of the south wall of Glaslough's Church of Ireland church, two stones carry a quiet record of the building's history.

One bears the date 1670, rendered in false relief, a technique in which the numerals are shaped by cutting away the surrounding surface rather than by carving the figures themselves proud of the stone. The second stone, made in the same style, reads 'And Rebu / ilt in 1763', the line break mid-word suggesting either a deliberate spacing decision or the constraint of working within a fixed block. Together, the pair function as a kind of compressed architectural biography, set into the wall at a height that keeps them visible but not immediately obvious to anyone passing below.

The two dates point to a building that was raised in 1670 and then substantially reconstructed less than a century later. The original date places construction in the decade following the Restoration, a period of considerable church rebuilding across Ireland after the upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. The 1763 rebuilding falls within a period of steady investment in Church of Ireland fabric throughout Ulster, when many earlier structures were either extended or replaced entirely. That both commemorative stones were produced in the same false-relief style suggests the later craftsmen were either deliberately matching the earlier inscription or working within a local tradition that had persisted across the intervening decades.

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