Wall monument, Athenry, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Religious Objects

Wall monument, Athenry, Co. Galway

In the sacristy of Athenry's Dominican church, tucked into the north-east corner, sits a small stone fragment that raises more questions than it answers.

Barely 30 centimetres wide and 23 centimetres tall, it is roughly shaped and easily overlooked, yet its flat face carries an inscription carved in false relief, a technique where the lettering is raised by cutting away the background rather than incising the letters themselves. What survives of that inscription reads: AS EREC, then 1690 FI, then KILL KELL. The text is incomplete, the stone having been broken at some point, and the full names or words it once recorded are now lost.

The date 1690 places the fragment in one of the most turbulent years in Irish history, the year of the Williamite wars and the upheaval that followed the Battle of the Boyne. Whether the monument was erected before or after the violence of that period, and for whom, cannot be fully determined from what survives. The partially legible inscription suggests a commemorative purpose, consistent with the function of a wall monument, a slab or tablet intended to be fixed to a church wall in memory of the dead. The fragment now rests in front of the shaft of a separate memorial cross also held within the church, the two pieces of stonework sharing a kind of accidental companionship in a corner of the sacristy, the room traditionally used by clergy to prepare for services and to store vestments and sacred objects.

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Pete F
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