Cross, Aglish, Co. Waterford

Sometimes the most intriguing artefacts are the ones that have simply vanished. At the ruined church of Aglish in County Waterford, a small stone cross once sat among the crumbling walls, its arms spanning just thirteen inches, roughly a third of a metre across. Modest in size, and already a fragment when it was first noted, it has since disappeared entirely, leaving only the written record of its existence behind.

The cross was documented by the Reverend Patrick Power, a prolific chronicler of Waterford's early ecclesiastical remains, who recorded it in 1898 as part of his survey of the county's ancient ruined churches. At that point the fragment, consisting of the cross arms and part of the shaft, was still present within the church ruin at Aglish. By the time Power returned to the subject in a 1938 paper on the old churches of the Decies, the historic territory covering much of County Waterford, it was already gone. The church ruin itself stands on low, level ground, roughly 470 metres northeast of the Goish stream, a small watercourse running on a southeast to northwest axis through the surrounding landscape. Whether the cross was removed, broken up further, or simply lost to time and weather is not recorded.