Architectural fragment, Termon, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Architectural fragment, Termon, Co. Clare

Sitting on a rough boulder inside a farmyard wall, this cut-stone fragment is easy to overlook, and that is precisely what makes it worth pausing over.

Measuring 0.77 metres long and just 15 centimetres thick, the stone carries two neat semicircular indentations along one edge, each carefully chamfered, meaning the edges have been cut away at a smooth angle rather than left square. The working is deliberate and skilled, and the leading theory is that this piece formed the top portion of a two-light window, the kind of paired opening divided by a central shaft that is associated with ecclesiastical or high-status medieval stonework.

The stone sits approximately 80 metres north-west of Temple Chronáin, a small early Christian church site in Termon, County Clare, and the proximity to that site is suggestive even if it proves nothing. Temple Chronáin, associated with the early Irish saint Crónán, belongs to a cluster of early medieval remains in this part of the Burren. Whether the fragment was quarried from a ruined structure on or near that site, carried here from somewhere further afield, or incorporated into the farmyard boundary at some later date during building or clearance work, is simply not known. Its provenance, as things stand, remains unrecorded.

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