Cross, Milltown, Co. Meath
Co. Meath |
Crosses & Monuments
Across the road from a church and its graveyard, in the flat terrain of County Meath, stands a solitary cross shaft.
It is not the cross itself, with its head intact and its iconography legible, but only the shaft, a rectangular upright of stone measuring roughly 22 centimetres wide, 13 centimetres deep, and 85 centimetres tall. Something larger once existed here, and what remains is the lower portion, quietly marking a spot in Milltown townland without much explanation for the passing eye.
The shaft sits to the south-east of St. Nicholas's church and its associated graveyard, separated from them by the road. St. Nicholas is an unusual dedication in an Irish rural setting, more commonly associated with continental and Norman influence, which hints at a medieval ecclesiastical presence in the area, though the notes offer no specific date for the cross or the circumstances of its survival. Cross shafts of this kind often represent what remains after the head was lost or broken, whether through weather, deliberate damage during periods of religious upheaval, or simple accident over centuries. The level landscape of this part of Meath, unremarkable in topographical terms, has a way of preserving such fragments in plain sight.