Graveslab, Athenry, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Athenry, Co. Galway

In the chancel of Athenry's Dominican church, a graveslab lies broken in two pieces, its base lost entirely, measuring just over a metre in surviving length.

What remains is enough to read the decoration: an incised Latin cross whose head and arms terminate in stylised fleur-de-lis ornament, the lily-like motif common in medieval ecclesiastical carving, while the stem of the cross is visible on the second fragment. It is the kind of object that rewards close attention, easy to overlook beside the larger monuments that surround it.

The slab sits close to the north-west corner of the late eighteenth-century tomb of Lady Matilda de Bermingham, a physical proximity that links two very different moments in the church's long history. The Bermingham family were among the most powerful Anglo-Norman lords in Connacht, and their association with Athenry's Dominican friary, founded in the thirteenth century, was deep and enduring. The graveslab itself is earlier in character, its bevelled rectangular form and incised cross placing it within a medieval tradition of memorial stonework. The fleur-de-lis terminals on the cross arms are a small but telling detail, pointing to the kind of continental decorative influence that travelled through ecclesiastical networks into the west of Ireland during the later medieval period.

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Pete F
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