Cross-slab (present location), Lisdowney, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Crosses & Monuments
A medieval stone carved with a cross now sits at a parochial house in Lisdowney rather than in the ground where it spent most of its existence.
The slab was recovered from the graveyard at Coolcashin, a site that also contained a fragment of a second cross-slab, suggesting the burial ground was once rather more richly furnished with carved stonework than its current appearance might imply.
Cross-slabs are among the more quietly compelling objects of early Christian and medieval Ireland: flat or roughly shaped stones incised with a cross, often marking a grave, sometimes associated with a church or monastic enclosure. The Coolcashin graveyard is linked to a medieval church of the same name, and it was from that ground that this slab was lifted and brought to its present keeping place. The fact that two such slabs were found at the same site points to a burial tradition with some local continuity, even if the details of who was commemorated and when have long since been lost.