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

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Crosses & Monuments

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

A small stone, barely the height of a house brick stood on end, marks what was once somebody's grave in a quiet corner of the Dingle Peninsula.

At just 0.43 metres tall and 0.31 metres wide at its base, it is easy to overlook, yet the east face carries a carefully incised Latin cross whose arms end in T-bar terminals, a detail that suggests deliberate craft rather than a simple scratch in the rock. It stands roughly three metres east of the south-east corner of a ruined church, positioned, as was customary, to face the rising sun.

The church itself, known as Teampall Bhaile Bhoithín or Ballywiheen Church, is a simple rectangular structure, a form typical of early medieval Irish ecclesiastical sites, where unadorned stonework was the norm rather than any architectural ambition. It sits in a graveyard near the foot of the eastern slopes of Croagh Marhin. The cross-inscribed stone belongs to a group of several such markers recorded at this site, each carrying incised crosses of varying design. J. Cuppage documented the stone in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a region that contains an unusually dense concentration of early Christian monuments. The T-bar terminal, sometimes called a serif cross, is a detail found on a number of early grave-markers across the Irish west, though its precise dating at any individual site is rarely straightforward.

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