Cross-slab, Dromkeen South, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Dromkeen South, Co. Limerick

A large rectangular stone slab sits face-up in a concrete surround on top of the western wall of a ruined medieval parish church in County Limerick, exposed to the sky rather than standing upright or sheltered within a building.

It is not a gravestone in the conventional sense, nor a freestanding monument, but a cross-slab, a carved stone bearing an incised ringed cross, the kind of early Christian marker that once served as a focal point for prayer or commemoration. What makes this one quietly arresting is the design itself: a double-lined ringed cross, the circle intersecting the arms of the cross in a style associated with early Irish ecclesiastical carving, rising from a pyramidal base that gives the whole composition an almost architectural formality. The slab measures 1.46 metres in length and between 0.57 and 0.53 metres in width, tapering slightly, with a thickness ranging from 0.17 to 0.23 metres.

The carving was already attracting scholarly attention well over a century ago. George Du Noyer, the Dublin-born geological surveyor and antiquarian who lived from 1817 to 1869, made a drawing of it in the nineteenth century, placing it among the many ecclesiastical sites he documented across Ireland during his fieldwork for the Geological Survey. In 1905, William Frazer made a copy of Du Noyer's drawing, now held in the National Library of Ireland. By 1912, Henry S. Crawford described the stone in print as being carved with a two-line ringed cross on a triangular base, a description that matches what can be seen today. The church ruins to which the slab belongs are recorded in the Sites and Monuments Record under the reference LI024-001001.

The ruins sit in Dromkeen South, in east County Limerick. The slab is set into the top of the surviving western wall, which stands at roughly 0.8 metres, so the carving is visible at close range rather than requiring any kind of excavation or special access. The incised lines of the cross can be difficult to read depending on the light, and low-angled morning or evening sun tends to bring out the relief of carved stonework far more clearly than flat midday light. The surrounding church remains are modest, and the slab itself is easy to overlook if you are not specifically looking down at the wall top rather than around at the general structure.

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