Cross-slab, Gortacurraun, Co. Kerry

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Gortacurraun, Co. Kerry

At Gortacurraun on the Dingle Peninsula, a carved stone slab stands at the eastern edge of a low rectangular mound whose origins nobody has fully explained.

The mound, measuring roughly 18 metres north to south and 9 metres east to west, incorporates a subcircular arrangement of upright stones left partially open to the east, though the interior has since been filled in with field clearance material. Whether the mound predates the slab, postdates it, or has any direct relationship to it remains an open question, which gives the whole ensemble a quietly unresolved quality.

The slab itself is 1.5 metres long and relatively slender, about 40 centimetres wide and 12 centimetres thick. Carved into the upper third of one face is an equal-armed cross set within a circle, a form sometimes called a ringed cross-slab, which tends to belong broadly to the early medieval period in Ireland. What makes the decoration here particularly specific is the termination of each arm: each ends in what is described as an H-motif, a T-bar with further T-bars at each of its extremities, producing a distinctive double-barred flourish at the four cardinal points. The carving has a spare, almost geometric quality that rewards close attention. The stone's history has at least one small error attached to it: H. S. Crawford, writing in 1912, recorded a cross on the reverse face, but subsequent examination showed he had confused it with a different stone entirely, the cross at Kilduff graveyard some distance away. It is a useful reminder that early fieldwork, however diligent, could easily conflate two monuments in a landscape dense with early Christian remains.

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