Graveslab, Abbeypark, Co. Galway

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Abbeypark, Co. Galway

Three graveslabs line the north wall of the chancel at Clontuskert Priory in County Galway, bracketed in place like a row of upright sentinels.

The easternmost of the three is a notably slender rectangle, 1.66 metres tall and just 55 centimetres wide, with incised decoration carved into the upper portion of its face. Incised decoration of this kind, cut directly into the stone rather than raised in relief, was a common approach on late medieval Irish funerary slabs, and the restrained geometry of the work here is typical of the period. What gives this particular stone a quiet poignancy is the fragmentary record it preserves: it is dedicated to one John Colohan, who died in a year recorded only as XX32, the first two digits lost to time or damage.

Clontuskert Priory, an Augustinian house in east County Galway, was a significant ecclesiastical site through the later medieval period, and its chancel retains several pieces of carved stonework that speak to the devotional investment of local families in commemorating their dead within the walls of a religious community. The two slabs standing to the west of the Colohan stone are also identified as late medieval, suggesting that this stretch of the north chancel wall served as a deliberate arrangement of memorial stones, grouped together rather than scattered. The partial date on the Colohan slab, ending in 32, could place his death anywhere from 1032 to 1932 in theory, though the style and context point firmly toward the late medieval centuries, most likely the 1400s or 1500s. The site is protected under the National Monuments Acts.

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