Graveslab, Athenry, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Tombs & Memorials
Inside the nave of Athenry's Dominican church, set into the floor near a doorway that no longer opens, a graveslab lies broken in two pieces.
It is easy to overlook, being the second slab north of that blocked entrance along the south wall, but its inscription asks something specific of whoever passes: to pray for the soul of Roger Grany, his wife Katherin Higin, and their posterity. The date carved into the stone is 1688.
The slab itself is rectangular, measuring 1.85 metres long and 0.61 metres wide, and bears an incised Latin cross with expanded, wedge-shaped terminals at its head and arms. The base of the cross rests on a calvary, the stepped platform of three tiers traditionally associated with Golgotha, the site of the Crucifixion. The lettering above the cross is cut directly into the stone, spelling out the names of the Grany and Higin families in the compressed, practical manner common to late seventeenth-century memorial work. That the slab is now fractured into two pieces does nothing to diminish the legibility of its inscription, which survives intact across the break. The Dominican church it belongs to is a medieval foundation, and the slab represents one of the later additions to what had accumulated over centuries as a place of burial and commemoration within those walls. The families named, Roger Grany and Katherin Higin, are otherwise unknown from this stone alone, but the care taken with the carving suggests people of some local standing, commissioning a memorial in a form that was already becoming somewhat traditional by the time it was made.