Cross-inscribed stone, Baile An Teampaill, Co. Kerry

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-inscribed stone, Baile An Teampaill, Co. Kerry

At the far western edge of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, there is a graveyard that holds a reasonable claim to being the most westerly Christian burial ground on the European landmass.

Within it, in the north-western corner, sits a small rectangular sandstone slab, lightly incised with an equal-armed cross whose arms reach from edge to edge of the stone. It is an unassuming object, the kind that a visitor might pass without a second glance, yet its simplicity is precisely what makes it worth attention. A cross-inscribed slab of this type is among the earliest forms of Christian grave-marking in Ireland, a plain incised cross cut into local stone serving as both memorial and devotional object before more elaborate funerary sculpture became common.

The graveyard at Dunquin, known in Irish as Baile an Teampaill, lies 8.5 kilometres west of Ventry and just over 15 kilometres from Dingle town. A survey of the site carried out by Laurence Dunne in 2010 recorded four cross slabs in total. Two of them had previously been noted in the Dingle Archaeological Survey published by Cuppage in 1984, described there as rough stone crosses used as grave-markers. The stone in question, catalogued as number 30 in Dunne's survey, is a separate find, positioned roughly 3.5 metres from one of those earlier recorded slabs. Whether it belongs to the same broad period of early Christian activity at the site is not established, but its presence adds another quiet layer to a place already notable for the density of its early ecclesiastical remains.

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