Cross-inscribed stone, Ceathrú An Teampaill, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Crosses & Monuments
At the eastern end of a grave-mound, roughly ten metres from the south-west corner of a ruined early church on the Dingle Peninsula, sits a small carved stone that most visitors would walk straight past.
It measures just 37 centimetres high and 22 centimetres wide, barely the size of a large book standing upright, yet its eastern face carries a carefully incised cross with T-bar terminals, the kind of early Christian grave marker that once dotted the burial grounds of early medieval Ireland in considerable numbers, and now survives only in scattered fragments.
The stone stands in the graveyard surrounding the remains of Teampall Bhaile Bhoithín, known in English as Ballywiheen Church, a simple rectangular structure of the kind that characterises the earliest phases of Christian settlement in the west of Ireland. The site lies near the foot of the eastern slopes of Croagh Marhin in the Corca Dhuibhne region of west Kerry. The cross carved onto the stone belongs to a tradition of marking individual graves with inscribed slabs rather than raised monuments, a practice associated with early monastic communities throughout Ireland and particularly well represented on the Dingle Peninsula. The T-bar terminal, where each arm of the cross ends in a small horizontal serif-like flourish, is a modest but deliberate decorative choice, connecting this otherwise plain stone to a broader vocabulary of early Christian carving. The site was documented in Judith Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a foundational reference for the area's early medieval remains.