Cross-inscribed stone, Glebe, Co. Longford

Co. Longford |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-inscribed stone, Glebe, Co. Longford

In a graveyard in Glebe, County Longford, a stone bearing a carved cross lies flat on the ground rather than upright in the earth.

This prone position is itself a quiet puzzle. Cross-inscribed stones, which carry incised rather than fully sculpted crosses, are among the older categories of early Christian monument found across Ireland, and they often raise more questions than they answer about origin and intent. Whether this one was always recumbent, or whether it fell or was laid down at some point in its history, is not recorded.

What is known is that the stone lies close to a memorial dedicated to one Jas. Scott, who died in 1746. The proximity of an early carved stone to an eighteenth-century burial marker is not unusual in Irish graveyards, where ground that held religious or commemorative significance for centuries often accumulated layers of use across very different periods. The juxtaposition here is a small, concrete illustration of that continuity: a named individual from the mid-Georgian era resting near an object that may predate him by many centuries, both now sharing the same patch of Longford earth.

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