Cross-slab, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

A stone slab bearing an elaborate incised design was found not in a church or graveyard, but propped against the wall of a house, set into the ground on top of an earthen mound on the island of Inis Gé Thuaidh, a small island off the coast of Mayo.

That the slab ended up in such a domestic, almost casual setting makes its decoration all the more arresting. One face carries a cross formed from arcs, set within what was intended as a double circle; the inner circle survives intact, but the outer ring survives only as two arcs, one above and one below. Beneath this design, four paired spirals are arranged in an elaborate composition, and below those a horizontal incised line crosses the slab, with a short vertical line dropping from its centre to the base of the stone. The reverse face, by contrast, is plain: a simple Latin cross, nothing more.

The slab was recorded by the art historian Françoise Henry, who published her findings in 1951, identifying it as Slab 2 in her survey. Henry was a foundational figure in the study of early Irish Christian art, and her fieldwork on remote Atlantic islands brought a number of obscure pieces like this one to wider scholarly attention. The mound on which the house stood, known as Bailey Mór, is itself a site of archaeological interest. Cross-slabs of this kind, flat stones incised with crosses and decorative motifs rather than carved in relief, are associated with early medieval Christian communities in Ireland, and the spiral ornament on this example points to a sophistication that sits somewhere between folk carving and the more refined manuscript traditions of the period. The slab has since been removed from the island and is now held in the National Museum of Ireland.

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