Cross-slab, Ardane, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Ardane, Co. Tipperary

Among the dozens of carved slabs gathered at St. Berrihert's Kyle in County Tipperary, one small piece of red sandstone carries a Latin cross so finely worked that the relief barely clears the surface by three millimetres.

The carving grades outward to meet the original face of the stone, giving it a subtlety that rewards close attention rather than rewarding a glance from a distance. This is slab 61, catalogued by Pádraig Ó hÉailidhe, and it sits on an internal ledge in the eastern sector of an oval stone enclosure built by the Office of Public Works in 1946 to house and protect the collection.

St. Berrihert's Kyle is an early ecclesiastical enclosure, a type of bounded sacred ground associated with an early Christian community or holy figure, in this case a saint whose name is preserved in the placename. The cross-slabs gathered here represent a remarkable concentration of early medieval carved stonework, and this particular example, measuring roughly 48 centimetres by 15 centimetres and just 8 centimetres thick, belongs to the tradition of inscribed or decorated slabs that marked graves or served devotional purposes at such sites across Ireland. The choice of red sandstone places it within the local geology of the Tipperary region, and the restraint of the carving, a Latin cross rendered in the shallowest of relief, is characteristic of the understated skill common to this body of work.

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