Cross-slab, Lugduff, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Lugduff, Co. Wicklow

A rough stone slab, not much taller than a ten-year-old child, sits a short distance north-east of one of Glendalough's quieter ruins.

Most visitors to the valley gravitate towards the round tower and the cathedral near the main monastic enclosure, and even those who make the walk along the southern lakeshore to Reefert Church tend not to stray far beyond its low walls. Yet just over thirty metres away, in the woods at Lugduff, this cross-slab stands largely unnoticed, its incised decoration worn but legible.

The slab measures roughly 1.44 metres by 0.45 metres, and carries a single-line incised cross whose head and arms terminate in triangular expansions, a form sometimes called a cross pattée in simplified outline. This style of carving is characteristic of early medieval Irish monastic sites, where plain incised slabs served as grave markers or devotional objects rather than the elaborately sculpted high crosses associated with wealthier foundations. Harold Leask, the architectural historian whose 1950 survey of Irish churches and round towers remains a key reference for sites of this period, recorded and illustrated the slab, noting its position as approximately 7.3 metres north-east of Reefert Church itself. An earlier record also exists: a drawing of the slab appears in Robert Cochrane's detailed architectural notes on the ecclesiastical remains at Glendalough, published in 1925 as part of the Eightieth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, covering the years 1911 to 1912. The slab's presence in both sources suggests it was already recognised as a distinct feature of the site in the early twentieth century, even if it has never attracted much popular attention.

Reefert Church, to which this slab is linked by proximity, is itself a somewhat overlooked corner of the Glendalough complex, a small Romanesque ruin set among trees beside the upper lake. The cross-slab lies beyond the church's north-eastern boundary, close enough to suggest an association with the burial ground that once surrounded it. Anyone making the walk should look carefully once past the church walls; the slab is easy to miss among the undergrowth, particularly in summer when vegetation is dense.

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