Cross-slab, High Island, Co. Galway

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, High Island, Co. Galway

A small slab of garnet mica-schist, broken at both ends and carrying no ornament, might seem an unlikely object of interest.

Yet this modest fragment, measuring just forty centimetres in height and twenty-four in width, hints at something more considered than its plain surface suggests. A curved notch cut along one edge indicates the stone was likely shaped into a cruciform outline, meaning it once functioned as a cross-slab, a category of early medieval marker used to denote sacred or burial ground. The loss of both ends makes it impossible to know the full extent of that intended shape, but the surviving notch is enough to read the maker's intention.

The stone was found among rubble close to the church on High Island, a small and isolated island off the coast of Connemara in County Galway. High Island, known in Irish as Ardoileán, was the site of an early Christian monastery, and the scatter of ecclesiastical remains there, including the church, beehive cells, and enclosing walls, places this fragment within a broader complex of early medieval religious activity on the island. Fisher recorded the slab in 2014, noting its material as garnet mica-schist, a metamorphic rock typical of the west Connemara geology. The stone is no longer on the island; it has been removed for safekeeping and is now held at the Office of Public Works depot in Athenry, County Galway.

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Pete F
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