Cross - High cross (present location), Burgage More, Co. Wicklow

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross – High cross (present location), Burgage More, Co. Wicklow

At roughly 4.3 metres tall, the high cross at Burgage More in County Wicklow is immediately conspicuous, but it is the proportions that catch the eye first.

The arms extend much further than is typical for a ringed high cross, giving the whole thing an elongated, almost restless quality. A small carved boss marks the centre of both faces, a subtle detail on an otherwise unadorned granite surface. The cross is imperforate, meaning the spaces between the arms and the ring are solid stone rather than cut through, which is a fairly common feature in Irish high crosses but worth noting here because the unusual arm length makes the ring feel almost incidental.

The cross was not always where it stands now. It was moved to the south-western corner of a modern graveyard from its original position at the nearby Burgage More church and graveyard site. Its original dedication is uncertain: the nineteenth-century scholar John O'Donovan, writing in a source cited by O'Flanagan in 1928, recorded that it was said to be dedicated to either St Mark or St Baoithin, a Columban monk associated with early Irish monasticism. The ambiguity itself is telling, suggesting the oral tradition around the cross had already grown hazy by the time anyone thought to write it down. A second cross fragment stands to the east of the main one. Only part survives, now standing 1.35 metres high, with a single unusually long arm remaining and an original width across the arms of around 1.5 metres. Both pieces are granite, both ringed and imperforate, and together they suggest this was once a more substantial ecclesiastical site than the present graveyard setting implies.

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