Cross-slab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

On the island of Inis Cealtra in Lough Derg, Co. Clare, a long flat stone lies on the ground in a corner of the burial ground known as the Saint's graveyard.

It is not upright, not especially prominent, and considerably worn, yet its surface carries a carved programme that repays close attention: a Latin cross rendered in double lines with hollowed angles, geometric ornament of squares and crosses covering the base and the area to the right of the shaft, and an interlacing pattern along the left side. The combination of geometric and interlaced decoration on a single slab is quietly unusual, and the stone's recumbent position, lying face-up rather than standing as a marker, places it within a tradition of grave-slabs that functioned more as memorials pressed into the earth than as visible monuments.

The scholar R. A. S. Macalister recorded the slab in 1916 to 1917, cataloguing it as number 77 in his survey and characterising it as being of twelfth-century type. At that point the pattern was already much worn, suggesting the stone had been lying exposed for many centuries before it came to scholarly attention. Macalister's measurements put it at six feet by one foot two inches, roughly 1.8 metres by 0.35 metres, making it a long, narrow piece. Its precise location within the graveyard has been noted with some exactness: 17.3 metres from the south wall and 2.7 metres from the west wall, which gives a sense of how carefully the island's archaeology has been mapped over the years. A drawing by de Paor survives in the site records, capturing the carved details that the stone's surface no longer communicates easily to the naked eye.

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