Cross-slab, Ardane, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Crosses & Monuments
Sitting on top of a low wall within an oval enclosure in County Tipperary, a small slab of red sandstone carries a Latin cross on each of its faces.
The crosses are cut in low relief, with double-rounded hollows worked into the angles where the arms meet the shaft, a detail that gives each design an almost soft, considered quality. The slab itself is modest, less than half a metre long and barely a centimetre and a half thick, and it has weathered considerably. That two crosses were carved, one on each side, raises the obvious question of intent, though no clear answer survives.
The slab sits within St. Berrihert's Kyle, an early ecclesiastical enclosure in the Glen of Aherlow. Kyle, from the Irish coill, typically refers to a wood or grove, and the name here suggests the kind of sheltered, liminal site often associated with early Christian settlement in Ireland. The oval stone enclosure that now contains the slab and a collection of other early carved stones was built by the Office of Public Works in 1946, providing a structured setting for material that might otherwise have been scattered or lost. The slab itself was catalogued by Ó hÉailidhe in 1967 as slab 21A/21B, the designation reflecting the fact that both faces were treated as distinct, if related, objects. The site as a whole is understood to preserve traces of an early medieval religious community, and the cross-slab belongs to a tradition of simply carved devotional stones common across Ireland from roughly the sixth century onwards.