Cross-slab, Ardane, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Ardane, Co. Tipperary

A small slab of coarse grey sandstone, barely the length of a forearm, sits on top of a wall in the southern sector of St. Berrihert's Kyle in County Tipperary.

What makes it worth pausing over is not its size but its two faces: one carries a Latin cross in low relief, only 1.3 centimetres proud of the stone surface, with rounded hollows cut into the angles where the arms meet the shaft; the other bears a simpler, single-line Latin cross with a triangular terminal at the base and rounded terminals on the arms and head. Two distinct carved designs on one modest piece of sandstone, catalogued as slab 32A/32B, sitting quietly in the open air.

St. Berrihert's Kyle is an early ecclesiastical enclosure, a kyle being a term for a small sacred or secluded place associated with an early Christian saint. The site preserves a collection of early medieval cross-slabs and carved stones associated with the obscure but locally venerated St. Berrihert. The oval stone enclosure in which this slab now sits was constructed by the Office of Public Works in 1946, presumably to gather and protect loose stones on the site. The enclosure is stepped internally, giving it a tiered, almost theatrical arrangement. The description of slab 32A/32B comes from the scholar Ó hÉailidhe, writing in 1967, who catalogued the cross-slabs at the site in some detail, recording the dimensions of this piece as 0.48 metres by 0.23 metres, with a thickness of 0.13 metres. That level of care in documentation reflects how seriously such modest, easily overlooked carvings have been taken by those studying the early Irish church.

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