Graveslab, Rathmichael, Co. Dublin

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Rathmichael, Co. Dublin

A graveslab that nobody can currently locate sounds like an odd thing to write about, and yet the mystery is precisely the point.

Recorded, measured, described, and drawn, this small granite slab from the ruined medieval church at Rathmichael in south County Dublin exists fully in the documentary record while its physical whereabouts remain unconfirmed. It is the kind of object that slips between the cracks of heritage inventories, known to scholars but no longer pinned to any particular corner of ground.

The slab was first noted by O'Reilly in 1901, at which point it was lying in the ruined chancel beneath the east window of Rathmichael Church, a medieval ruin set on the eastern slopes of Carrickgollogan. O'Reilly's record was later elaborated by Ó hÉailidhe in 1957 and again by Healy in 2009, and together these sources give a reasonably precise physical description. The slab is granite, measuring roughly 68 centimetres in length and between 43 and 48 centimetres wide, and about 10 centimetres thick. Its decoration is spare and enigmatic: a raised band runs along the central axis of the stone, marked by a cup-mark, a small circular depression carved into the surface, positioned midway along it, with a second cup-mark partly broken away at the fractured end. A single transverse line cuts across the slab at the level of that central cup-mark. The combination of cup-marks and linear ornament on a medieval graveslab is unusual, and scholars have documented it carefully enough that a measured drawing survives in Healy's 2009 study, even if the stone itself has since become difficult to account for.

Rathmichael Church is accessible and worth visiting in its own right, the ruin sitting quietly among older earthworks on the Carrickgollogan hillside in the general area of Shankill. Anyone going specifically in search of the graveslab should be aware that its precise location within or around the site has not been established in recent survey work. It may still be somewhere at the church, displaced or obscured, or it may have been moved. The practical advice, if the slab matters to you, is to treat the visit as an open question rather than a confirmed sighting, and to consult the National Monuments Service record before making the journey.

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