Cross-slab, Inchagoill, Co. Galway

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Inchagoill, Co. Galway

On the island of Inchagoill in Lough Corrib, a carved stone slab has been built directly into the fabric of an early church wall, which is itself an unusual fate for a piece of early medieval sculpture.

The slab sits in the western end of the south wall of the nave of Templenaneeve, a small church whose name roughly translates as the Church of the Saints. Part of the slab's edges are obscured by mortar, so its full dimensions remain uncertain, but what is visible measures roughly 1.1 metres wide and 0.89 metres tall. What draws attention is the carving itself: an elaborate three-line cross, meaning the cross is rendered not as a single incised line but as a form with three parallel lines defining its outline, with semi-circular terminals that expand outward at each arm's end and a central roundel where the arms meet the shaft. Both the roundel and the terminals are filled with a key or fret pattern, the kind of interlocking geometric ornament associated with early Christian stonework across Ireland. The design is, by scholarly account, slightly asymmetrical, which gives it a handmade quality that formal description alone does not quite capture.

What makes this slab particularly interesting is its apparent relationship to a stone on High Island, a remote island off the Connemara coast. The two slabs are described as almost identical, which raises quiet questions about shared workshops, travelling craftsmen, or the movement of design templates between early monastic communities along the western seaboard. Inchagoill itself was an established monastic site, and Templenaneeve is one of two early churches on the island. The connection to High Island, noted by researchers including Higgins in 1987 and Scally in 2014, remains one of those small but telling details that suggest early Christian Ireland was rather less isolated than its island monasteries might imply.

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