Font, Rosahane, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Religious Objects

Font, Rosahane, Co. Wicklow

At Rosahane in County Wicklow there is a font that, in a sense, is no longer there.

A stone baptismal font, sub-rectangular in shape and distinguished by a slot opening cut into one side, was recorded at this site in 1959 by the scholar Liam Price. When the site was inspected again in 1990, the font was simply gone, reported to have been moved to another graveyard somewhere, though no precise destination appears to have been established.

Price's 1959 record gives the object its only firm documentary footing. The slot opening he described is an unusual feature; most early Irish fonts are plain basins, so a deliberately cut aperture in the side suggests either a specific liturgical function or a later adaptation of the stone. Fonts of this kind are associated with early Christian sites, where they served for baptism by affusion, the pouring of water over the head, rather than full immersion. Whether the font at Rosahane originated with an early ecclesiastical foundation there, or arrived later, is not clear from what survives of the record. What is clear is that by the time anyone thought to document the site in detail, the object itself had already been quietly relocated, its new home unconfirmed.

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