Cross (present location), Carrick, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross (present location), Carrick, Co. Wexford

At the south angle of a crossroads on the outskirts of Carrick-on-Bannow, three granite crosses have been set into the road bank, almost as if tucked away for safekeeping.

They are penal-style crosses, a form associated with the era of the Penal Laws in Ireland, when Catholic worship was suppressed and religious objects were often kept small, plain, and inconspicuous. The one on the left is modest in scale, just under 80 centimetres tall, with a diamond-shaped head on which a cross has been carefully incised. At the crux sits the monogram "IHS", a Christological abbreviation derived from the Greek name for Jesus. The stem below that central point is cracked across, a small fracture that gives the stone a quietly worn quality.

This cross is not thought to have originated at the roadside. It is believed to have been moved from the graveyard of the Carrick church site, which lies roughly 300 metres to the southwest along the same NE-SW ridge on which the village sits. The displacement is not unusual for objects of this kind. Small devotional stones were frequently relocated over the centuries, sometimes to protect them, sometimes simply because boundaries and land uses shifted. What makes this grouping distinctive is that three such crosses now share the same bank, gathered together at a spot that would otherwise read as an unremarkable rural junction.

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Pete F
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