Cross - Wayside cross, Glencolumbkille, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Crosses & Monuments
A stone shaft stands on the south side of an old trackway in Glencolumbkille, County Clare, its cross long since gone.
What remains is an octagonal upright, less than a metre tall, slotted into a chamfered block and raised on a rough pyramid of stone. The cross head that once topped it survived into the early twentieth century but had disappeared by the early 1990s, leaving behind something that reads more like a relic of a relic than a monument in its own right.
Wayside crosses were a familiar feature of the Irish rural landscape, marking routes to churches, holy wells, or other places of devotion, offering a point for prayer or pause along the way. This one sits roughly 125 metres from St Colmcille's church, along a track connecting the two, and appears on Ordnance Survey maps from as early as 1897, simply labelled "Cross". The stonework itself carries a quiet puzzle: a channel cut into the underside of the chamfered base block suggests the stone may have begun its life as a drain-stone, possibly in the nearby church, before being repurposed as part of this modest roadside structure. The octagonal shaft, with each face measuring only seven or eight centimetres across, is finely shaped for something so small, though the upper northwest side is broken away near the top.