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

Co. Kerry |

Crosses & Monuments

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

At the eastern end of a grave, south of a ruined church on the lower slopes of Croagh Marhin, sits a flat slab of stone bearing a symbol that is not quite what it first appears to be.

Carved into its eastern face is an inverted T, and along its upper edge run three small notches. It is a modest thing, barely over half a metre tall, and easy to overlook entirely. But what makes it quietly odd is that it was not always this size. The stone once stood almost twice as high, and the stem of that inverted T continued downward into a lower section that has since broken away and been lost.

When R. A. S. Macalister examined the stone in 1898, he was able to reconstruct what the original carving would have looked like, a tall cross form with the crossbar positioned near the top rather than at the centre, a design sometimes associated with early medieval Christian grave-marking in Ireland. The site itself, known as Teampall Bhaile Bhoithín or Ballywiheen Church, is a simple rectangular church ruin set within a graveyard near the foot of Croagh Marhin on the Dingle Peninsula. The inverted T form, when read together with the missing lower portion, suggests the stone originally carried a Latin cross, the crossbar sitting high on a long shaft, which was a common convention in early Irish ecclesiastical stonework. The three notches cut into the upper edge are less easy to explain and their purpose remains uncertain. Cuppage's archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, published in 1986, documented the stone alongside the broader complex of remains at this site, which includes the church structure and its associated graveyard, both of some antiquity.

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