Graveslab, Laughanstown, Co. Dublin

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Laughanstown, Co. Dublin

At some point in the medieval period, someone took a grave slab, a marker likely intended to lie over a burial for eternity, and repurposed it as a lintel above an aumbry in the wall of a church.

An aumbry is a small recess cut into a church wall, typically used to store liturgical vessels, and the stone fitted neatly enough across its opening that it remained there. The slab survives only in part today, measuring a little over 0.28 metres long and 0.47 metres wide, but its shaped edges, rounded at the corners and tapering outward, are still recognisable as the work of someone who dressed stone with a particular intention in mind.

The slab belongs to a group of eleven early granite grave slabs recorded at Tully graveyard in Laughanstown, documented by Swords in 2009. Granite was the local material of choice in this part of County Dublin, and the collection at Tully represents a notable concentration of early funerary stonework. This particular example, catalogued as number 80 in Swords's survey, was eventually incorporated into the south wall of the chancel of the church at the site, its original function quietly overwritten by a more practical one. The thinness of the surviving fragment, just 0.008 metres thick, suggests it had already been reduced or broken before it was set into place.

The church at Laughanstown, recorded under the reference DU026-023001-, sits within a graveyard that retains traces of its long use. The aumbry in which the slab serves as a lintel is in the chancel's south wall, so visitors with an eye for architectural detail can locate it without too much difficulty once inside the roofless structure. The slab's surface shows the characteristic rounded angles noted in the survey, which help distinguish it from plain building stone. The site is relatively unassuming from the outside, and the reused grave slab is easy to overlook entirely if you do not know to look up at the wall rather than down at the ground.

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