Cross-slab, Lugduff, Co. Wicklow

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Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Lugduff, Co. Wicklow

A few paces to the north-west of a ruined church at Lugduff, in the Glendalough valley of County Wicklow, a small stone slab stands quietly in the ground.

It is easy to overlook, being irregular in shape and modest in size, yet it carries an incised Latin cross, the kind of early Christian grave or boundary marker that once appeared across monastic landscapes throughout Ireland.

The slab was recorded by Patrick Healy in a 1972 survey of ancient monuments at Glendalough, carried out for the Office of Public Works. Healy described it as an irregular piece of mica schist, a metamorphic rock with a characteristically flaky, glittering texture, measuring roughly 65 centimetres tall, 37 centimetres wide, and about 7 centimetres thick. The cross is incised in outline rather than carved in relief, a technique common on early medieval slabs. Healy also noted a second line running parallel to the shaft of the cross, though he was uncertain whether this was a deliberate feature or simply a natural flaw in the stone. That ambiguity is part of what makes the slab interesting: it sits at the boundary between intention and accident, between human mark-making and the grain of the rock itself. Its precise position, 2.25 metres north-west of the north-west corner of the nave of the associated church, suggests it was placed deliberately in relation to the building rather than left at random.

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