Font, Lickmolassy, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Religious Objects

Font, Lickmolassy, Co. Galway

In the southern half of a medieval graveyard in Lickmolassy, County Galway, a small baptismal font sits propped on a recently built rectangular stone plinth, its ancient stonework elevated a little awkwardly above the ground as though waiting to be rehoused.

The font itself is only half a metre tall, yet the care taken in its carving suggests it once occupied a position of some ceremony. What makes it quietly arresting is the contrast between the roughness of its improvised modern base and the precision of the object resting on it.

The font is octagonal on the outside, a common enough form in late medieval ecclesiastical stonework, but the bowl cut into its interior is square, measuring roughly 42 centimetres across. Around its base run four ogee-headed openings, small arched recesses with the distinctive double-curved profile that became fashionable in Irish church architecture during the 15th century, the period to which this font is tentatively attributed. Ogee detailing of this kind appears on windows, niches, and decorative features across Connacht from roughly the 1400s onward, and its presence here places the font within a recognisable tradition of Gaelic and Hiberno-Norman craftsmanship. The font stands close to the graveyard's gateway entrance, near the remains of the medieval church with which the site is associated, suggesting it has been moved at some point from whatever interior position it once occupied rather than left exactly where it was first used.

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Pete F
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