Cross-slab, Ardane, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Crosses & Monuments
Among the dozens of early medieval cross-slabs gathered at St. Berrihert's Kyle in County Tipperary, one small piece of red sandstone sits quietly on an internal ledge in the eastern sector of the enclosure, easy to overlook and yet precise in its making.
It measures just forty centimetres by twenty-five, and is barely eight centimetres thick, but cut into its face is a carefully worked outlined cross with a very short shaft, its angles filled with squared hollows, the whole design defined by a broad, shallow, pocked line. The back of the slab is not visible, pressed as it is against its surroundings, so whatever the stone might conceal remains unknown.
St. Berrihert's Kyle is an ecclesiastical enclosure associated with an early Irish saint, and the site holds a remarkable collection of inscribed and decorated slabs. A cross-slab is exactly what it sounds like, a flat stone bearing a cross motif, typically carved in the early medieval period as a marker of Christian devotion or burial. The oval stone enclosure that now protects and organises the collection was built by the Office of Public Works in 1946, constructed with stepped internal ledges to display the slabs systematically. The particular piece described here was catalogued as slab 14 by the scholar Ó hÉailidhe, writing in 1967, who noted its red sandstone composition and the distinctive squared hollows set into the angles of the cross, a decorative detail that gives the design a slightly architectural quality despite its modest scale.