Cross - High cross, Aughkiletaun, Co. Kilkenny

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross – High cross, Aughkiletaun, Co. Kilkenny

In a pasture in County Kilkenny, the base of a high cross sits behind the eastern gable of a ruined church, separated from its upper half by about two centuries and several miles of road.

The two portions of this early medieval cross have not been reunited since 1820, when a Father Broughal removed the upper section and had it erected in the churchyard at Graiguenamanagh. What remains on site is the granite base, quietly weathering in farmland, while the carved upper portion stands in an entirely different parish.

The site at Aughkiletaun, known in Irish as Achadh Chailltin, is recorded in the Martyrology of Donegal, a seventeenth-century catalogue of Irish saints and their associated places, which locates it in the territory of the Uí Drona, west of the River Barrow, to the south of Leighlinbridge. The entry names the founding saint as Bairfionn, son of Aedh, linking the site to St Báirrfhionn mac Aodha and placing it within the network of early medieval monastic foundations that once spread across Leinster. High crosses of this period were typically large, free-standing stone monuments carved with scriptural scenes and decorative patterns, used as focal points for prayer and procession. This one, described by scholars as bearing a roughly carved Crucifixion and panels of interlace ornament, belongs to that tradition. Interlace, the interwoven geometric knotwork familiar from illuminated manuscripts, appears here in a form recorded and illustrated by H. S. Crawford in the early twentieth century.

The cross base remains in open pasture near the eastern gable wall, all that survives of the original church structure. Visitors wanting to see the carved upper section can find it in Graiguenamanagh, where it was re-erected following its removal in 1820. The two fragments, separated by Father Broughal's intervention, now offer a quietly divided portrait of the same early medieval foundation.

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