Tomb - effigial, Barrysfarm, Co. Limerick

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Tombs & Memorials

Tomb – effigial, Barrysfarm, Co. Limerick

At the eastern end of the south wall of a ruined church in Barrysfarm, County Limerick, a worn slab of conglomerate stone lies bearing the faint outline of an armed figure.

The carving is in very low relief, the kind that demands both good light and patience to read properly. What survives is a knight in mail, his left hand gripping a sword with a large disc pommel and a broad, fullered blade, the type of flat-grooved sword that had been in common use since Viking times before the diamond-sectioned blade gradually replaced it during the fourteenth century. The shoes end in points. The surcoat, a sleeveless garment worn over armour, is of medium length. The rest has been worn almost to nothing.

The church once belonged to the Hospital of Aney, also known as the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, a house of the Knights Hospitaller, the military-religious order that ran hospitals and fought in the Crusades. Scholars writing in 2016 have proposed that the figure on the slab is Roger Outlaw, prior of the Hospitallers' Irish headquarters at Kilmainham, who died on 13 February 1341 at the Hospital of Any. The chronicler Friar John Clyn recorded the death with evident respect, noting that Outlaw held three major offices simultaneously: prior of the Hospitallers of Ireland, Justiciar, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Clyn described him as a prudent and gracious man who, through his own efforts and with special royal licence, secured considerable lands, churches, and revenues for his order. If the identification is correct, this battered slab marks the resting place of one of the most powerful administrators in medieval Ireland.

The slab sits at the east end of the south wall of the church, recorded under the site reference LI032-147002. Photographs taken by Edwin Rae show it resting on a low wall set into an embrasure, an opening in the wall that has since been blocked up. The carving is shallow enough that overcast or raking light from the side will often reveal more detail than direct sun. The stone is conglomerate, rough-textured and uneven, which has not helped its survival, and visitors should be prepared for a monument that rewards close attention rather than immediate legibility.

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