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 an enclosure known as the Saint's graveyard, a modest stone slab sits close to the western wall.

It is easy to overlook, being less than a metre tall, but the carving on its face repays attention. A Latin cross is worked into the surface in low relief, its angles hollowed out with small circular cuttings, a decorative technique that gives the design a quiet precision quite different from the rougher grave markers found elsewhere on early Irish monastic sites.

The scholar R. A. S. Macalister examined the slab in 1916 and 1917, cataloguing it as number 49 in his survey and placing it within the twelfth-century tradition of Irish cross-slab carving. At roughly 99 centimetres tall and 55 centimetres wide, it falls within the typical range for this class of monument, slabs carved with a cross and set upright to mark a grave or commemorate a person of some standing within the monastic community. Inis Cealtra itself was an important early medieval island monastery on Lough Derg, the broad lake that straddles the Clare and Tipperary border, and its Saint's graveyard contains a concentration of such carved stones that reflects centuries of continuous use and veneration. The circular hollowing at the angles of the cross is a detail worth noting; this kind of negative cutting was used to articulate the junction of the arms and to catch the light in a way that flat relief alone would not achieve.

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