Graveslab, Lickmolassy, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Tombs & Memorials
A graveslab dated 1640 leans against the south wall of the chancel at Lickmolassy church in County Galway, its inscription swallowed entirely by lichen.
Someone was commemorated here, their name and perhaps their lineage carved into the stone at considerable effort and expense, and now that record is gone, at least to the naked eye. What remains is the slab itself, earthfast and tapering sharply from a base of 76 centimetres down to a narrow top of just 20 centimetres, giving it the distinctive wedge shape common to grave markers of the period.
The slab was noted in the chancel of the ruined medieval church, a structure that has its own separate record. It stands 1.58 metres tall, with the shoulder, the slight widening that echoes the shape of a human body, sitting at 1.41 metres. That bodily outline, subtly present in the stonework, was a common feature of Irish grave monuments from the later medieval period onward, connecting the memorial object to the person it represented in a quietly literal way. The date 1640 places this stone in a period of considerable upheaval in Ireland, just a year before the outbreak of the 1641 rebellion, though nothing in what survives here speaks directly to those events. Two further fragmentary graveslabs of similar character lie elsewhere within the same church, suggesting this was once a more legible ensemble of commemoration, now reduced by time and lichen to shape and dimension alone.
