Cross-slab, Ardane, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Crosses & Monuments
Among the collection of early medieval cross-slabs gathered at St. Berrihert's Kyle in County Tipperary, one small fragment stands out for its peculiarity.
Cut from red sandstone and measuring less than half a metre in length, what survives is only the lower portion of a Latin cross, carved in relief so shallow it barely rises two millimetres from the surface. What makes it quietly strange is the shaft's termination: rather than ending in a flat base or simple taper, it closes in an unusual cusped point, a detail that sets it apart from the more conventional forms found among its neighbours. Look closely and the marks of the carver's chisel, roughly a centimetre wide, are still legible in the background stone, lending the piece an immediacy that belies its age.
The slab sits within St. Berrihert's Kyle, an early ecclesiastical enclosure in the Glen of Aherlow, associated with the obscure early Irish saint Berrihert. The site holds a significant assemblage of inscribed and decorated stones, catalogued in detail by Ó hÉailidhe in 1967, who recorded this piece as slab 37. The carved fragment rests on an internal ledge in the northern sector of an oval stone enclosure, stepped on the inside, that was constructed by the Office of Public Works in 1946 to house and protect the collection. The small squared hollows cut into the angles of the cross arms are a detail shared by other slabs in early Irish lapidary work, though the cusped base of the shaft here has no straightforward parallel in Ó hÉailidhe's descriptions of the wider group. The reverse face of the stone remains inaccessible, pressed against its resting place, so whatever the back may hold is unknown.