Cross-slab, Killegar, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Killegar, Co. Wicklow

Against the south wall of the chancel at Killegar, County Wicklow, there is a small congregation of carved stones that repays close attention.

Several cross-slabs stand or lie here, each different enough from the others to suggest they were not made as a set but accumulated over time, each one a separate act of devotion or commemoration in stone. One slab, standing 1.14 metres tall, is decorated with cup and ring marks, a motif more commonly associated with prehistoric rock art, appearing here alongside later Christian ornamentation in an unusual blending of traditions. Another, slightly shorter at 0.95 metres, carries a Latin cross in shallow relief, with circles at the top and at the ends of the arms, and semicircular curves filling the space below, a considered composition for what might otherwise be dismissed as a modest field monument. A third, smaller slab bears only a simple incised Latin cross.

What makes this grouping stranger still is the presence of a Tau cross head, a T-shaped form rather than the familiar vertical-and-crossbar, measuring just 0.24 metres high and 0.49 metres across the arms, with a central boss carved on both faces. Tau crosses are relatively rare in Irish early medieval contexts, and their symbolic meaning, sometimes linked to Old Testament imagery and monastic tradition, remains a matter of some discussion among scholars. Peter Harbison catalogued this example in 1992. Alongside these carved pieces, fragments of two rotary querns, the paired grinding stones used to mill grain, were also found here, hinting at the practical life that surrounded the devotional. A granite cross-base survives outside the chancel's south wall, though the cross it once supported is long gone. A further stone cross head, formerly standing to the south-west of the church, was removed to the National Museum of Ireland, as documented by Ó Ríordáin in 1947 and noted again by Healy in 2009. A 1992 photograph reproduced by Healy shows yet another erect slab, this one with a circular depression at its centre, enclosed by a raised band, with an equal-armed cross above it, a design that suggests a different hand and possibly a different period from its neighbours.

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