Architectural fragment, Cashel, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Architectural fragment, Cashel, Co. Tipperary

At the south-western corner of 29 Main Street in Cashel, two pieces of medieval stonework have been quietly doing the job of quoinstones, the dressed corner-blocks that give a building's angle its structural integrity, for an unknown length of time.

They project slightly from the wall face, visible to anyone who happens to look down at the right moment, though most people walking Cashel's main street have their eyes trained further up, towards the celebrated Rock.

The upper of the two fragments is a large limestone door jamb, chamfered along its edge and finished with punch dressing, a technique in which a pointed tool is struck repeatedly across the stone surface to produce a roughened, textured face. Beside it, set into the wall on its side, is a substantial limestone corbel, a projecting bracket originally designed to support a beam, arch, or parapet above it. Both pieces are medieval in origin. Where they came from is not known. Cashel was, throughout the medieval period, a place of considerable ecclesiastical and political weight, and the town accumulated a great deal of cut and worked stone over the centuries. It would not be unusual for fragments to migrate from ruined or demolished structures into the fabric of later buildings, repurposed simply because good dressed limestone was too useful to waste.

The fragments sit low on the building's exterior, at roughly street level on the western face. They are easy to overlook, which is perhaps the most interesting thing about them: two pieces of medieval craftsmanship, origin unknown, load-bearing in a building on one of Ireland's most visited streets.

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Pete F
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