Cross-slab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

On the island of Inis Cealtra in Lough Derg, within a burial ground known as the Saint's graveyard, a modest stone slab carries a plain Latin cross rendered in two incised lines.

There is nothing elaborate about it. No knotwork, no inscription, no figural carving. Its restraint is precisely what makes it worth attention.

The scholar R. A. S. Macalister recorded the slab in 1916 to 1917, cataloguing it as number 34 in his survey and placing it typologically in the twelfth century. He measured it at four feet six inches long by one foot six inches wide, and described the cross as plain, a simple double-lined Latin form with no further ornament. Cross-slabs of this kind, flat stones incised with a cross and set into or over a grave, are among the most common markers found on early Irish monastic sites, yet their very plainness tends to draw less attention than the elaborately decorated high crosses that tend to dominate the literature. This one sits in the north-east quadrant of the graveyard, its position measured precisely from the north and east walls, a detail that speaks to how carefully the site has been recorded even if the stone itself makes few demands on the eye.

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