Graveslab, Abbeypark, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Abbeypark, Co. Galway

At Clontuskert priory in County Galway, a broken graveslab leans against the north wall of the chancel, just east of the doorway to the sacristy.

It is a quiet, easily overlooked thing: no carving, no inscription, no name. Whoever lies beneath it, or was once commemorated by it, left no legible trace on the stone itself.

The slab dates to the late medieval period and tapers slightly from top to bottom, measuring just over a metre in height and roughly half a metre across at its widest point. That tapering form is typical of medieval funerary slabs in Ireland, shaped to echo the outline of the body beneath. Clontuskert priory, an Augustinian foundation on the south bank of the River Suck in east Galway, was an important religious house throughout the medieval period, and its chancel holds two further graveslabs of the same era. This particular stone is broken, its fracture perhaps the result of centuries of disturbance or shifting ground, and it has at some point been lifted from its original position and propped upright against the wall, a common fate for slabs in ruined monastic sites where their original context was disrupted long ago. The absence of any decoration or inscription makes it impossible to identify who commissioned it, though the care taken to preserve it within the chancel suggests it was not considered insignificant.

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Pete F
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