Font, Killadoughran, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Religious Objects
In the graveyard at Killadoughran in County Westmeath, a carved stone lies on the ground to the east of the church ruins.
It is believed to be the base of a medieval baptismal font, the kind of vessel that would once have held water for christenings within the church. What makes this particular object quietly unsettling is not what remains, but what is missing: the font itself has vanished, and nobody is entirely sure where it went.
The base is a carefully worked piece of stonework, with a small central perforation at its core, ringed by a raised quatrefoil, a four-lobed decorative motif common in medieval ecclesiastical carving, and two circular mouldings with pointed, rose-like projections. At some point, the font it once supported was removed from the graveyard. By 1975, it had been recorded as sitting on the lawn to the south-east of Drumcree House, some distance from its original setting. When researchers went to verify this, the font could not be found at Drumcree House at all. Its present whereabouts remain unknown.
The base, then, is a kind of mute witness to a small disappearance. It sits in the open air of the graveyard, serving as evidence for an object that may still exist somewhere, perhaps in a private garden or a barn, perhaps long broken up, its carved decoration unrecognised for what it is.